


[Translation] An Exile Among Humanity

by selstarry



Category: Original Work
Genre: Age Difference, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dystopia, F/M, Female Alpha, Femdom, Fucked Up, Male Omega, Power Imbalance, Translation, Unhealthy Relationships, happy ending for a particular definition of happy, major character death in non-canonical bonus chapter only
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-28
Updated: 2020-04-11
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:02:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 19
Words: 41,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23351374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/selstarry/pseuds/selstarry
Summary: Exile No. 239: thirty-something, male omega, first degree felon. One day, he comes home to find the alpha girl Yasha sleeping in his bed.The unwholesome love story of a bashful tyrant girl and a listless young man.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 30
Kudos: 82





	1. First Meeting

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [人间流放者](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/574168) by 星河蛋挞. 



> Thanks to 星河蛋挞 for letting me translate this story!

Things are different nowadays, more lenient about everything. They no longer toss first degree felons into the radiation zone. The newest destination for Exiles is inside the Protected Area; those wastes of water and food can now appear at the side of ordinary citizens.

The sky is fully dark by the time No. 329 wakes up. Slowly, he levers himself off the ground. His hand makes contact with something sticky. He wonders if it’s the corpse of some animal; it takes him a moment to discover that it’s a used condom. He throws that crap aside, steadies himself against the wall, and gathers his clothes and pants. His jacket’s missing two buttons, no way to close it around himself. No streetlights in this alley. 329 squints and searches for a long time, to no avail. He gives up.

His forehead stings and itches; the skin of his face feels tight. He wipes at it with the back of his hand, but sees little improvement—he’s been lying here for at least half an hour, and all the fluids have dried. His fingers are even dirtier than his face. There’s mud under his nails, and dried blood on his fingertips. All the fault of the rough surface of the alley, and the way he cut his nails too short. But if he kept his nails longer, he’d vastly increase the risk of breaking them. Last month, he’d accidentally sprung off half a fingernail. That had hurt like hell.

No. 329 limps out of the alley. The passersby outside glance at him, then quickly turn their gazes elsewhere. The collar around his neck winks its little lights even at night. So long as he wears it, no one would kick up a fuss about his face or anything else.

The second year after the new Exile Laws were announced, the serial numbers are already up to five hundred something. In fact, they’d reached the three hundreds last year, as you can see by this man’s serial number. No one’s born with this kind of dumbass number for a moniker—he has a name, but that’s not important, so let’s just call him 329. 329 is a first degree felon, an Exile, a thirty-something male omega. He’s basically healthy, nothing wrong with his leg—he’s just having some temporary difficulty walking.

329 drags his legs, hauls his still-dizzy head, sluggishly back toward his rented room. He walks so slowly, and has been so short on sleep of late, that he nearly drops off while still on the road. Only the thought of returning home and taking a shower keeps him from curling up on the spot.

The alley is half a block from his pad. 329 makes it back, and is reaching for his keys when he notices that the door is unlocked.

The home address of every Exile is registered in a government database, quickly searchable via any private wristcom. Citizens, considering even that insufficiently public, insist on using more primitive methods to single them out, like painting things on the doors of the criminals. Only people who don’t give a crap about their property would rent to an Exile; the place is certain to be in the most wretched condition, unable to be made worse by a few dead rats or buckets of paint, or a lock that needs replacing every month. 329 grips his key, staring at the lock on the door, astonished that it’s undamaged. This time, it hasn’t been smashed open; it’s been picked. 

He opens the door, gropes for the light switch, and takes in the entire place at a glance. Nothing’s been taken from his rented room. On the contrary, something’s been added.

A pair of shoes, obviously expensive even at a glance, lies neatly beside the folding bed. A well-dressed girl, fully-clothed, lies sleeping on his bed. She looks like a purebred cat wandered in from somewhere, innocently curled up on 329’s narrow bed. 329 closes his eyes. The girl is still there when he reopens them, her hair neatly braided, a childish air to her small face.

More than anything, she looks like the lead role of some childhood fairytale, wandered onto the wrong set. But first of all, this is the kind of slum where even the toughest guys dread to spend the night. Second of all, she doesn’t smell like a child, but an alpha.

Pain pounds through 329’s head. He stands there for a minute, gripping the door handle, then decides to take a bath.

His apartment only provides a few hours of hot water a day. Due to the delay on the road, 329’s already missed them. In another few months, taking a cold shower is going to get uncomfortable, but the temperatures right now are fine. He can take a dousing of cold water, no problem. He turns the faucet; the water sprinkles down weakly from the showerhead. It starts out reddish-brown, only gradually becoming clear.

The streams of water are as limp as overcooked spaghetti, but they sting when they hit his injuries anyway. Clotted blood dissolves at his feet, clouding the water once more, the same color as the rusty water that’s spent too long in the pipes.

He spends half an hour cleaning himself up. The cold water numbs his areas of swelling, but the cold chases off his drowsiness as well as the pain. 329 dries his hair as he exits the bathroom, no longer as tired as before, once again able to think like an adult. With his powers of reason back in place, he’s forced to confront reality, instead of plugging his eyes and ears and pitching onto his bed in blissful apathy.

He’s got trouble in his bed.

He looks down at his bed. His uninvited guest probably presented not long ago, he thinks. She smells like green grass; he doesn’t know if it’s her natural scent or her shower gel. This alpha smells like an herbivore. Up close, she’s beautiful like a porcelain doll, beautiful enough to make 329 uneasy. In these days, beauty and intelligence don’t have to be bestowed by nature. Perfect genes, like everything else, are labeled with price tags and put up for sale among the upper classes, limited edition merchandise for nobility.

“Hey, wake up!” says 329.

He doesn’t dare reach out a hand to shake her; touching this kind of strange visitor without permission seems like a terrible idea. He can only try to wake her from a distance of two paces, hoping she doesn’t have any overly inconvenient purpose in mind.

Sleeping Beauty rouses.

She gazes at 329, blinking sleepily. And then her eyes suddenly widen, the drowsiness gone without a trace like morning mist. She rolls off the bed, too quickly, banging against the wardrobe next to it. She sucks in a pained breath, but her eyes are watching 329 the entire time, not willing to part from him an inch. This alpha has emerald-green eyes. She stares at 329 so intently that goosebumps rise on his back.

Automatically, he touches his face. He just showered; there’s nothing on his face. 329 almost suspects she recognizes him from somewhere, but dismisses the thought a moment later. The look in the girl’s eyes is far too fervent. It’s not the look of someone seeing a familiar face. It’s the look a child gets, opening up a Christmas gift and seeing the long-awaited new toy.

“Hello,” the girl says hurriedly. “My name is Yasha. I’m delighted to meet you! I—I didn’t mean to fall asleep, but you returned home later than I expected—ah, I don’t mean to criticize you! I really am terribly sorry for falling asleep. Such a breach of manners, and on our first meeting! I’ve given you cause for laughter—”

She goes on and on in one breath, her face crimson, her smile timid, as if sincerely apologizing for falling asleep—and not for picking 329’s lock. She reaches a hand out at 329. He stares for a moment, and only then realizes she’s not demanding anything. She wants to shake his hand.

329 extends a puzzled hand. Yasha grips his hand, wags it up and down, then lets go crisply. A proper, formal handshake, not a trap or an attempt to ingratiate. 329 doesn’t remember the last time someone’s shaken his hand. The girl’s hand is warm and soft, no calluses, roughness, or cracks. Of course. She’s not from around here. If the door slammed open right then, and a heavily-armed squad charged in shouting at 329, he wouldn’t feel terribly surprised.

Silence has fallen outside. It’s getting late.

Yasha’s still speaking, courteously but endlessly, as if overly excited or nervous, her eyes shining. If it were some other time, 329 might be happy to listen to her, but he hasn’t slept much the past few days. He’s tired and sleepy, and all he wants was a quiet bed.

“If you don’t mind me asking,” he interrupts her, “do you have business with me?”

Yasha stops. Her receding blush climbs up her cheeks once more. She looks like she wants the ground to swallow her up. “I’m sorry, I got too worked up!” she says, bobbing her head in apology. “I’ve wasted your time with all my babbling, really…” She sighs. “It’s like this. If I may inquire, would you mind engaging in sexual relations with me?”

“… _What?_ ” says 329, wondering if he heard wrong.

“Would you mind engaging in sexual relations with me?” repeats the young alpha, smiling bashfully, enunciating crisply.


	2. A Revelatory First Time

She sounds like she’s asking 329 for a pen.

It’s not the tone of voice one uses for an unreasonable request. Rather than uncertainty, it contains only some embarrassment at the imposition. Yasha’s inquiry is quite polite, the politeness of a gentlewoman. Lesser persons ought to have some self-awareness: people like her are so polite because they’re brought up right, rather than because their conversation partner warrants it.

329 is very self-aware. Even if he hadn’t been in the past, the past year has made him learn.

 _I don’t want to enter sexual relations with anybody,_ he wants to say. _Get the hell out of my room and let me sleep a couple hours before my next shift_ —but it would be pointless. Exiles can, of course, go to the police, tell a Supervisor that they’ve been mugged, robbed, beaten, raped. This would serve no purpose other than wasting time. If the Supervisor was in a good mood, they’d send you off with some form response. If you encountered one who really hated the new Exile Laws (“you scum of society deserve to die outside!”), the outcomes get a lot worse.

“Please don’t worry. I’m fifteen years old. It’s perfectly legal to enter relations with me,” Yasha says considerately.

She adjusts her wristcom and flashes 329 her ID. Her date of birth really does show her to be exactly fifteen—today is the girl’s birthday. Most of the ID has been blurred out for privacy reasons, revealing only an age and a headshot. The girl in the photo smiles serenely at 329.

 _Why?_ He wants to ask. _Who are you? Why are you here? Why should I say yes?_

If he asks, maybe she’ll answer, talk more talk, waste more time. 329 is tired as hell.

He asks, “Right now?”

“If it’s no trouble.” Yasha beams.

Another polite stock phrase of the well-bred.

Even as she spoke, Yasha had stood, vacating the bed. 329 walks over, lies down on his back, takes off his pants, and gets out a condom from under his pillow. Funny thing—Exiles have to work for their living, but the omegas among them get free condoms from the government in the name of humanist consideration. In reality, it’s probably the same concept as handing out free condoms at a brothel—avoiding STD transmission, and nothing more.

The alpha takes the cheap product from him, but makes no move to use it. 329 is wondering if he should try to talk her into putting it on, when Yasha says, “Could you please remove the rest of your clothing? Alternately, would you mind if I took them off for you?”

329 is wearing only a sleeveless shirt, exposing his shoulders and a patch of his chest, but it seems that the alpha still thinks he’s wearing too much. He takes off the shirt and stuffs it under his pillow, hoping that his uninvited guest won’t take as long with this as she had with all her talk.

His skin is exposed to the air, displayed under the dim lamplight. By omega standards, it’s not a body to get anyone going. No shortage of old injuries lie scattered everywhere, and no shortage of visible needle marks. Treated with primitive procedures, without the care of medical equipment, they’d become dispiriting scars, interwoven with newer injuries. Subdermal bleeding looks even brighter against his pallid skin. His elbows are scraped, his knees covered in purple and blue. He hopes the alpha’s not a fan of doggy style.

But if Yasha hasn’t ordered him to turn over and kneel, it’s only because she’s dragging this out as usual.

She looks at 329, head to toe, her gaze licking over every inch of skin. Her green eyes are luminous under the lamplight, like a wolf at night with meat in its sights. The young alpha blinks constantly. The scene before her is too stimulating; she needs to take breaks. That mouth of hers no longer chatters ceaselessly. It parts, just a little, then abruptly snaps shut—the respectable young lady hurriedly swallows, so as not to drool.

When she licks her lips, she looks especially like a purebred cat, the sort with a pedigree worth tens of thousands of credits, a diet more expensive than ninety percent of humans’. A high-grade pet, elegant and stately as it dines. It’s pretty funny. This alpha is clearly aflame with arousal already, pupils dilating, trousers tenting, and yet her features are sweet enough that she comes off as innocent even as she burns with lust, her face all wide-eyed unworldliness. She places a well-cared-for hand on 329’s battered chest, gently caressing his scars and nipples. Her hand is too soft, her movements too light; the itch of it raises goosebumps.

Her feather-light touches don’t last for long. After her brief scouting mission, Yasha climbs over him. Her lips and tongue descend upon 329’s neck, lapping repeatedly at his Adam’s apple, before gliding down. Her mouth is as artless as her hand, at times licking, at times nipping, gradually growing urgent and wanton. Whatever she thinks of, she does. She is very much enjoying him.

For some reason, he doesn’t mind.

Maybe it’s because Yasha looks like she’s enjoying it so much. She’s at once unbearably impatient and taking it easy, like someone humming a tune as they prepare dinner, the delight infectious. Maybe it’s because almost no one has looked 329 in the eyes in the past year as they spoke to him—if you don’t count verbal abuse and orders at his workplace, then no one at all. Yasha is enjoying him, enthusiastically, contentedly. It’s not humiliation, torment, or proving one’s power. It’s desire, that’s all, like a beast hunting when it’s hungry.

Of course, given the force of her biting, it’s also like a small creature teething on your finger.

Maybe that’s the other reason why 329 can’t get mad. Yasha is truly too young, not even half his age, or his size. Slender-armed and slender-legged, she only reaches 329’s chest when she stands upright; he could easily lift her up and spin her in circles. Rather than an alpha pinning him down, it’s more like she’s perched atop him, not heavy at all, like a little fawn. Even if this little fawn is preparing to fuck him, he feels no sense of impending violation.

Yasha has already unfastened her trousers. Her sex organ presses against 329’s lower abdomen, sliding back and forth, leaving a line of wet marks. When she pants, it’s long and heavy; she’s trying to control the volume by holding her breath, but the more she holds it the louder it gets. The body she’s dreamed of lies on display before her, quietly splayed open, like a scaled and gutted fish lying on a platter, waiting to be sampled. She can’t breathe.

She squeezes a finger into 329’s body. His entrance is moist; she can smoothly insert her middle finger to the hilt. _This is the inside of his body. I’m touching his organs_ , she thinks, so eager she’s nearly shaking. She turns her finger in circles. The man in front of her doesn’t move, but his body cavity contracts a few times, sucking at her finger. Yasha’s scalp tingles. She pulls out her finger and bends down to kiss him. The omega obediently parts his lips. His mouth is as wet and hot and soft as he is below.

But he’s not erect.

Yasha’s right hand has been coaxing at 329’s cock this entire time. She applies gentle force; her palms are soft. There shouldn’t be anything wrong in theory. She watches his face with some apprehension. 329 is looking at her too, his grey irises like the morning fog on glass windows.

“Don’t mind it.” He pauses, then says dismissively, “Omegas are like that.”

Omegas _are_ like that. They don’t easily become aroused except during heat; making a omega orgasm at any other time is harder than setting off a beta. It takes patient, skill, and perhaps even some feelings.

329 has taken a lot of injuries, on his hands and feet, on his torso, on his sensitive places. These experiences have made him very good at enduring pain, but they’ve also dulled his sense of touch. It takes a long time for his nipples to peak; even after several minutes of coaxing, his cock is only half-hard, as feeble as the water streams in the shower. He’s wet, purely as his body’s self-defense measure, rather than through sexual arousal.

Most alphas wouldn’t care if he’s turned on. A small number, on the other hand, would care very much, not out of consideration for him, but for their own dignity. They consider their technique outstanding, their cocks girthy; by all rights, they should get an omega coming again and again. If the receiving side doesn’t appear sufficiently appreciative, it’s nothing short of an insult.

“Forget it, omegas don’t get hard easily,” says 329. “I’m soaking wet. Come on!”

He doesn’t want her to keep wasting time. If he has to, he’ll make some sound, although he’s unsure if he has the energy for acting. It’s unfortunate that he has a cock, or he’d have a much easier time faking orgasms.

Fortunately, the young alpha believes him.

She turns her attention away from 329’s cock, puts on the condom, and attempts to lift up 329’s thigh—it proves a challenge for her. She’s half-grown and clearly unaccustomed to physical labor; 329 thinks that if he tried propping his legs up on her shoulders for real, the weight would squash her flat. Yasha pouts vexedly, then fiddles with her wristcom once more.

The wristcom flashes, and a sheen of light wraps around Yasha’s hand. 329’s leg lifts easily, like something’s holding it up. He knows what this is: an XT-21, a military model. With this “glove”, a child can lift up a truck. It’s an expensive product, in theory not available for sale. The Consul’s crack teams wear it to suppress rebellions and exterminate mutants; the girl in front of him wears it to lift an omega’s thigh.

329 finds it risible. But the girl kisses him on the thigh, and begins to fuck him.

Yasha pants uncontrollably.

Soft flesh presses against her from every direction, surrounds her, delectably sweet. The pleasure is as intense as bullets going through her. The omega’s thigh sticks to her hand, the muscle drawing taut against her palm. She wants to bite it. Yasha kneels between this man’s legs, as if sitting in the seat of honor, his body laid out for her viewing.

The lines of his muscles are gorgeous, sturdier than the average omega’s, yet not as rough-hewn as an alpha’s. Those scars are just right, like a forest after the hurricane’s ravaging, like the ruins left behind after the fires of war sweep through. His hair is like frosted gold. His face is handsome, lovely, _perfect_ . Yasha thinks the word _perfect_ was made for him. If he changes, then the standard for _perfect_ must change too. He lies on bedsheets faded with washing, his hair still beaded with water, dewy and delicious, like a heaven-sent banquet misplaced.

Thank you for your hospitality.

Yasha slams into him until he shakes. He grabs at the edge of the bed; the cot groans underneath them. She reaches a hand to touch where they’re joined together, smearing the fluid upward, until his lower abdomen glistens like a gladiator rubbed with oil. The girl stares ravenously at each wound, each fresh injury. It feels like pouring a bottle of carbonated drink over her heartstrings; whether it’s heartache or ecstacy, she can’t tell. _So beautiful_ , she thinks.

“You’re so beautiful,” she says.

The older man blinks, noncommittal.

He only looks at Yasha, saying nothing. Even this is enough to make Yasha’s heart nearly leap out of her chest. She wants to tear at him savagely, bite until he bleeds, listen to him cry and cry out, and at the same time she can’t bear to leave a single toothprint. He’s looking at her. It makes her want to feel her hair—has her hair gotten mussed? Has she made any improper sounds, or silly expressions? If she has, she can’t help it. He lies underneath her in the flesh, better than any erotic dream, better than any simulation. Yasha is joined with him (through a layer of latex, a real pity,) touching his skin and his insides. The thought quickly brings her to climax.

They fuck twice that night.

The first time ends very quickly. Afterwards, the girl collapses panting atop 329, even apologizing for her unsatisfactory performance. “I’m short on practical experience,” she says, embarrassed. “It won’t be like this next time!” The next time, she knots inside 329. She’d carefully chosen a side position, so that they wouldn’t get too tired even if they spend half an hour like this.

All in all, not bad.

The girl is enthusiastic enough that 329 doesn’t need to contribute with any sounds. The two rounds of intercourse can’t be called comfortable, but they’re not painful either—perfectly ordinary, thank heaven and earth. Yasha spends the entire time fully clothed; only after she’s started knotting him, the second time, does she appear to remember something, stripping fully bare in an instant. The small, naked alpha holds 329 tight, rubbing herself against him, sighing with satisfaction, as if jumping into bed after a long, tiring day and giving her blankie a hug.

Her fuzzy head butts against 329’s back, her skin as smooth as silk. Her small breasts press against him, soft like her lips. Yasha kisses his back intermittently, and says, “Today’s my birthday, you know!”

 _What, am I supposed to give you a gift?_ 329 thinks.

“I’ve never had a better birthday,” Yasha sighs.

 _A stranger illegally entered my home and fucked me to celebrate her birthday_ , 329 thinks. But as before, he’s not angry—he just finds it funny. Maybe it’s because there’s too many things to be angry about; he’d wear himself out if he tried to chase down every single one. A polite rapist isn’t much, in the grand scheme of things. And maybe it’s Yasha herself. Who knew there’s such a thing as a natural-born princess, youthful and sweet, naive and innocent, pursuing everything as if it were hers by right.

329’s eyes are falling shut.

He’s sleepy as hell. He doesn’t plan to shower again. This is good enough. The alpha is still inside him, yet her touches and kisses seem soft and innocent, as if she were grooming a pet.

“I want to give you a present!” says Yasha. “What would you like?”

 _What’s this, emotional damages or a prostitute’s fee?_ Once again, 329 feels a sense of absurdity. He’s been called “whore” countless times, but he’s not actually a prostitute. See, if someone wants to fuck him, they don’t pay. He’s free. Exiles must pay exorbitant fines to shorten their sentence. Every month, the money transfers automatically from his account, and his account receives rigorous inspection; every sum must be legal. Commercial prostitution is an illegal trade.

So he says, “Eight hours of sleep.”

By the time the girl’s assent drifts out from behind his back, 329 isn’t registering it clearly.

The next day, when 329 wakes up in his room, his wristcom tells him that’s it’s ten in the morning. His 5:30 alarm didn’t go off. He forcefully closes his eyes, lies for a little while on his bed, then gets up and gets ready.

He’s four hours late. His boss is going to fire him for sure, and most likely refuse to pay him this month’s salary. He needs to go in anyway, since they still have his deposit. 329 washes up and walks to work, five blocks away. It’s surprisingly deserted there. All the shops on that entire street are closed, handwritten notices taped to the doors.

“I heard the filters broke down,” the passersby are complaining. “No water or power. No idea how long they’ll have to stop work.”

The water and power outage only lasts for a day. The next day, when 329 goes to work, his boss doesn’t seem to realize he was ever late yesterday.


	3. Chat

Like every other unusual occurrence in 329’s life, his uninvited guest’s night visit gradually fades into the distance. Life must continue.

He holds three jobs, eats, sleeps, exercises in his limited free time. Omega Exiles enjoy another piece of social welfare: a free physical examination every quarter. If the examination shows an omega to be intentionally self-harming or incapable of taking care of themselves, the government will “provide aid,” sending them into a public Omega Welfare Center to receive the best of care.

Omegas in the Welfare Center receive the most nutritious food, the best medical care, and most comfortable work-life balance. They don’t have to do any work—all they have to do is become either a “Mother” or a “Lover”. The two roles are divided up according to physical condition; the doctors put a stamp in your wristcom, marking out the better genes for reproduction. The omega spends the next decades popping out citizens, or, alternately, spends the next decades soothing the restless hearts and bodies of unmated alphas. It’s all for the public good. What can you do when artificial wombs are cost-ineffective, and prostitution is illegal?

For the time being, 329’s in no danger of receiving aid—he does his best to stay in shape. If he works hard enough, he’ll be able to remove his collar in thirty years’ time, pay off his sentence, retiring at about the same age as a normal person. As for what he’ll do in thirty years’ time without savings or a pension, that’s a concern for later.

It’s been a normal day. Nothing out of the usual.

In the morning, one of the guys bumps into 329, nearly shoving him under the wheels of a cart. By the time 329 gets up, he’s gotten away. He also wears a collar—an alpha Exile. He gives 329 a dirty look before running off, looking not at all sorry for knocking him over. Exiles aren’t allowed to socialize with each other; 329 hasn’t met many others like him in the last year. The few times he’s interacted with them, it hasn’t been particularly friendly. If an Alpha or Beta Exile is unable to work, they’re abandoned to a lonely death, but Omegas have a way out. It’s impossible not to garner resentment.

The new guy on 329’s team messed up and broke the separating machine, so at noon, his workplace confiscates the entire team’s lunch. 329 goes to guzzle down some water; when he comes back, he finds the new guy lying on the ground. They hadn’t held back, beating him up. 329 reaches out a hand to help him up, only for it to be slapped aside. The guy clambers up and hurriedly walks away, his head down the entire time.

As for the afternoon, the factory boss is a hardcore supporter of the Consul, and as usual, during the news broadcast, he orders the workers to stop and applaud at the screen. The Lord Consul waves onscreen, his son standing two paces behind him. There’s no title for a Consul’s son, but everyone calls him the Crown Prince on the down-low. After all, the highest office in the Protected Area has been passed down within the same family for generations. The Lord Consul held an audience with some dignitary or another; the dignitary indicated that the situation in the borderlands is certain to improve, the mobs are certain to be put down, so on and so forth. No important news; it’s all the same talking points as usual.

With his afternoon shift over, 329 can finally eat his first meal of the day.

He gnaws on the compressed biscuit. This stuff is cheap, and ensures he gets basically the nutrients of a meal, but it tastes like wood shavings, hard and dry. You have to hold it in your mouth for a while before it gets soft enough to chew. 329 heads for his rented room as he eats. There’s a little over half an hour before his night job, long enough for him to change clothes.

When he opens the door, there’s already someone inside his home.

The young alpha sits on the bed, since this place is too cheap and cramped to have tables or chairs. This time, Yasha is awake. The moment 329 walks in, she bounds to her feet and greets him with a smile. “Good evening!”

“…Good evening,” says 329.

“I’m terribly sorry for leaving unannounced last time. I had to get home, or my parents would worry,” says Yasha, her face the picture of contrition. “You were so soundly asleep that I couldn’t bear to wake you. Did you sleep well last time? You look much better than you did before. It’s wonderful to see.”

“I still have work tonight—” says 329.

“The traffic light on 6th Street malfunctioned. There was an accident not long ago. I’m afraid the store you work at won’t be able to open tonight,” says Yasha. “Do you need me to show you the related news report?”

329 doesn’t say anything; she brings up the news anyway, projecting the report on the dirty wall of the room. It’s as she says.

She can cut off power and water to a street. She can “announce” a traffic accident. Naturally, then, she can leave an Exile half-dead and short a couple of limbs. 329 might not know why she’s expending this much energy on someone like him, but the warning reaches him loud and clear.

His mouth has become very dry. Suddenly, he’s lost his appetite. There’s no place in his room to set down a half-eaten biscuit, so he stuffs the entire rest of of the compressed biscuit into his mouth, then forcefully chews and swallows. The hard biscuit fragments scrape at his throat. 329 gulps some water, shoving it all down.

“Ah, there’s no hurry, don’t choke!” Yasha says hurriedly. “I have plenty of time this time around.”

“You’re not ‘engaging in sexual relations’ with me?” says 329.

“I didn’t say that…” The girl rubs her nose, giving him a bashful smile. “But since we have so much time this time, we can do something else first?”

Her gaze makes a full circuit of the room, without spotting anything they can do.

“For example, er, we can have a chat?” she says, full of expectation, sitting down on the bed.

Have a chat. How novel.

Even if it were between regular people, few would start by earnestly saying “let’s have a chat.” Would regular people? 329 isn’t sure. He can’t remember. Ordinary life seems like something from a past life. He finds it absurd, but not distasteful. Sometimes, when he’s not so tired that he falls asleep immediately, he talks to the pillow. Sometimes you… just need to talk, no matter to whom.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asks.

“Anything!” Yasha beams. “I want to learn about you.”

329 is an Exile, a first degree felon, thirty-something, holds three jobs. His schedule is stuffed full, very full. Aside from work, there’s nothing he can actually discuss. And if Yasha can use water and power and traffic systems to adjust his schedule, she no doubt knows the ins and outs of his work already.

“There’s nothing much to say.” 329 gives it some thought, but says, in the end, “You probably know all of it already.”

“Knowing it is different from hearing it from you,” says Yasha. “You can talk about…the past?”

“I don’t remember,” 329 says immediately.

He doesn’t remember much, really, honestly. There’s barely anything left. He compresses his lips, crossing his arms defensively, backing away. His back bumps against the door. The room is tiny, no room for retreat. Yasha hurriedly flaps a hand and shakes her head. “Then we won’t talk about it! I never wanted to make you uncomfortable!”

“I honestly don’t remember,” 329 repeats. “I underwent surgery. The surgery was a success.” 

If you weren’t going to toss first degree felons out of the Protected Area, how do you ensure that they won’t cause any more harm?

The collar contains a control system to prevent all criminal behavior. And before putting on the collar, a small procedure is performed on the felons. Some people are born bad; the surgery can fix them. Some people were simply led astray by others; the surgery can wipe out those memories, restoring a contaminated soul to a pristine state.

It’s nothing like the lobotomies of old. Patients don’t become drooling idiots; they don’t even get the sort of major memory discontinuities that would affect daily life. They just lose the bad stuff. They’re fixed, saved. The surgery destroys the person who committed the crime; crime won’t even cross the mind of the person that remains.

“I’ll talk about myself, then!” Yasha suddenly changes the topic. “A few days ago I shot down a ‘full load’ in one of those new unmanned planes. Mama praised me.”

“Oh…” says 329, uncomprehending. “That’s great.”

“I’ve been learning since I was eight.” Yasha smiles proudly. “To be honest, I’d rather fly a real plane, but they won’t let me. They say it’s too dangerous. As if! In all my years, I’ve never crashed an unmanned plane once, not even the time I ran into a flock of raptor mutants.” 

Only then does 329 realize what she’s talking about. Yasha’s ‘full load’ isn’t referring to some combat simulation game. She means she piloted an unmanned plane outside the Protected Area to hunt mutants. A ‘full load’ means a full cargo load, a full unmanned plane’s worth of game.

Unlike the commoners who must hunt to make a living, unmanned planes are the extravagant pastime of the rich and powerful.

“It really is too dangerous,” says 329.

“It’s not that dangerous, if the pilot’s good enough,” says Yasha. “I’m awesome!”

“Accidents happen, no matter how awesome you are. You only have one life,” says 329.

“But there are plenty of people who aren’t afraid of accidents!” Yasha argues. “Charging in and out of mutant swarms and dense gunfire, smashing the statue of the Consul, and escaping successfully afterward. His plane even had a damaged engine due to an accident!”

Something like that had happened; 329 has a vague impression. The statue of the Consul was hundreds of meters tall. They’d wanted it to become the symbol of the Protected Area. But one plane, one civilian-modified plane, had rammed the face off the statue. In the end, it had never been installed.

“I didn’t know you supported the revolution,” says 329, facetiously.

“I don’t,” Yasha laughs. “But the pilot was really good-looking, and it was so cool, the plane dodging and weaving between the laser beams. Besides, that statue was stupid anyway. Who’d make themselves that big and put it on a road?”

329 laughs, speechless. Even if he only has the vaguest bit of memory, he remembers it as an event that had shaken the entire Protected Area. Yasha talks about the smashed statue of the Consul like it’s some ugly portrait painting that had gotten damaged, her tone light and airy, as if it weren’t even as worthy of attention as the attractive pilot.

“They executed him in the end, that pilot.” 329’s eyes narrow as he tries to dredge up memory, but can’t recall much. “Otherwise, he’d still be on the news.”

“Yeah.” Yasha’s head droops, but then it immediately perks back up. “But a fallen eagle can still make a beautiful specimen.”

“Or a lump of smashed, rotting meat,” says 329, undermining her words.

“It won’t! You just have to take care of it properly,” says Yasha, full of certainty. “Even if it’s smashed up, restoration technology can make a lump of rotting meat as beautiful as it was in life—they might not be able to now, but the research institute will figure it out sooner or later, if they put their minds to it.”

She's so self-assured, as if chance and the laws of nature have to make way for her if she wished it. In a different person, that pride, the pride of someone born with a silver spoon in her mouth, should by all rights arouse disgust. But Yasha voices it so boldly, while at the same time seeming to seek validation, the same way as she’d said “I’m awesome.” It’s strange, like showing off, and like making nice, aloof and fervent at once. Like a child arranging all her toys in front of you, head held high, waiting with anticipation for your praise and exclamations.

She really is too young.

Yasha sits on the bed. It’s too high for her to rest her feet on the ground; her heels dangle, swaying back and forth. Her face is tipped up; wherever 329 walks, her head turns, like a sunflower. It’s already evening, and the last light of the setting sun seeps through the crevices between buildings, falling on her, making her red hair blaze even brighter, like a fiery-pelted fox. Her green fox eyes are fixed on 329, as if she can’t get enough of him.

329 thinks of a cow commercial.

In the ad, a cow sings the praises of a certain steakhouse, declaring that it hopes to be prepared by this restaurant and no other, because the chefs here are highly skilled and passionate about cooking. When 329 first saw the ad, he’d thought it was the stupidest thing, full of humanity’s arrogant assumptions. To a cow about to be butchered, did it matter whether its meat was lovingly cooked or thrown straight into a dumpster?

Right now, incredibly, he thinks he understands how that fictional cow had felt.

“Shall we begin?” he asks.

Yasha blinks, then eagerly nods her head.


	4. The Second Time

329 goes to get condoms, but Yasha grabs his hand.

“I don’t want to use one,” she pouts. “I want to go directly inside you.”

329 hesitates, and in the interim, she pulls up her certificate of health. The timestamp on the examination is earlier today (physical examination, for the upper classes, requires only a scan, very quick and convenient.) Like before, there’s only a headshot on it.

“I might not be in good health,” says 329.

Yasha flicks a finger, projecting 329’s physical examination report from last month onto the wall. _Good physical condition. Satisfactory. Meets requirements._

“I got fucked after that,” 329 says. “Once or twice they didn’t wear condoms.”

“But I gave you a scan last time, after you fell asleep.” Yasha sticks out her tongue, as if apologizing for not telling him, and only apologizing for not telling him. “You’re fine. And I gave gave you shots. You won’t catch anything.”

“I didn’t know there’s vaccines for STDs,” says 329.

“There are.” The girl giggles. “They’re just too expensive for widespread promulgation.”

Treatment for mild radiation poisoning hasn’t advanced one bit all these years, and meanwhile STDs have been cured, with vaccines available, even. It’s probably because only lower-class scavengers get radiation poisoning, while the upper classes care more about whether they can fuck everything they want to fuck.

It’s like taking care of a stray animal, 329 thinks. Providing food when the mood strikes, gaining companionship. No intention of taking him in, but he needs his shots anyway—otherwise he’d be too dangerous and dirty for even amusement. Should he be happy that he’d lost his reproductive abilities long ago? If he hadn’t, she’d probably have to go to the effort of neutering him.

Yasha’s watching him, face full of anticipation. There’s no uncertainty to her anticipation; she’s just waiting for him to hurry up and agree.

329 nods. Nothing he can do besides nod.

He lifts up Yasha’s skirts and tugs her underwear down to her knees. He doesn’t dare pull her underthings to the ground or throw them on the bed; it’s Yasha who hurriedly kicks off her shoes, pulls off her underwear, and tosses it aside. She wears white silk stockings. 329 kneels between her legs and takes her into his mouth; the silk-stockinged legs rest on his shoulders.

Her legs are as dainty and graceful as the rest of her, a well-proportioned sort of delicacy, not the malnourished spindliness 329 sees so often. Her feet keep bouncing on his shoulders, from pleasure, but also as if playing with him. Sometimes, 329 wants to put his hands under her armpits and lift her up, swing her around, check how much she weighs. The thought is foolish and pointless. The girl is perfectly healthy, like a bonsai, or maybe she just hasn’t spread her branches yet.

She doesn’t taste unpleasant—if anything, she’s fragrant with body wash, so that 329 suspects she showers right before each time they’ve met. Maybe it’s because of her youth; maybe newly-matured alphas from powerful families are just like that. Who knows. For an alpha she seems too soft and delicate, standing on the border between child and alpha. He doesn’t know how she’ll become with age.

That’s not to say he thinks she’ll lose her manners…a cruel alpha doesn’t need to be brutish, just careless.

The young alpha tips her head up, panting, her neck and throat making a beautiful arch. Abruptly, she bites her lip and lowers her head to watch 329 once more. Her gaze is intent and fervent. It makes you wonder just what she sees.

* * *

Yasha sees what she wanted to see.

Her first sexual experience had brought her ecstacy; so, too, her second. The tall, broad-shouldered man is on his knees, letting her look down on him from above. That handsome face remains so proper-looking, even when he’s performing oral sex. 329’s cheek bulges from her organ, as if gulping something down.

Yasha thinks he’s absolutely adorable, sexy _and_ adorable, entrancing like you can’t believe. Her fingers card into his short hair. If her mother were here, she’d certainly think him an improper omega, not because he’s kneeling and giving her head, but because he cuts his hair so short. This man seems to have always kept his hair short, never reaching his eyebrows even at its longest. It’s not too convenient to grab onto, but it’s quite nice to look at.

He’s always quite nice to look at, whether he’s high-spirited or dead-eyed. He has an air of drained exhaustion. Yasha never thought drained exhaustion could be called an air, let alone that this sort of dull weariness could strike such a chord within her, as if a feather were tickling back and forth in her heart. 329’s so obedient, obediently kneeling, obediently swallowing her down, keeping his teeth out of the way perfectly. Nothing deserving of criticism, nothing requiring punishment. It makes Yasha very happy, but she can’t help but feel a little wistful as well.

The melting pleasure makes her legs wobbly. Her knees unconsciously tighten on either side of 329’s head. His tongue is wet and hot and soft, assiduously servicing Yasha, until she finally can’t resist yanking on his hair, thrusting, at last coming into his mouth. The omega gags at these rough movements; it must not be comfortable getting prodded in the throat. But he doesn’t struggle, allowing Yasha to hold his head there, for several seconds. She lets go, panting. He backs off a little, coughs a few times, and swallows under her gaze, swallows all the semen in his mouth.

He really understands what an alpha wants in bed, doesn’t he.

Yasha caresses 329’s face. That strong, handsome face is surprisingly soft to the touch. The omega looks up at her, only to look back down as soon as he realizes their gazes have crossed. This man kneels, ducks his head, avoids her gaze, meek and dull—he wants to make himself meek and dull. Like curling up and playing dead in front of a wild beast, hoping the predator just takes a few bites and leaves.

As if. A prankster’s excitement rises in Yasha’s heart.

She pats the bed, inviting 329 to lie down and take off his clothes. 329 obeys. Yasha sits at the edge of the bed, caressing the prone, completely bared body like a connoisseur.

He has a fantastic body. When not in motion, the muscles are supple and firm to the touch. His shoulders are broad, his pectorals solid. Yasha pinches the nipples on either side, twisting them, making them harden into two fleshy points. She squeezes the two beads of flesh; 329’s chest rises and falls lightly.

After Yasha’s played a while with his chest and abdomen, her hand slides down, to the omega’s genitals. 329’s penis remains drooping, no response at all, a soft mass of flesh to the touch. His testicles and flaccid penis are very soft, the hairs thin and not prickly. It’s like touching a hamster’s tummy. Yasha kneads them for quite a while, attracted by the novelty. If it causes 329 pain, he doesn’t show it.

The game continues for a while. 329 doesn’t grow hard, but Yasha does. She climbs up onto the bed and sticks her finger into him, thrusting it in and out to stretch him out. She plays around in there, and soon enough, it grows wet.

Yasha pulls out her finger. It’s wet with clear fluid, pulled into a long strand, like melted cheese. A man’s entrance is tight and sticky to thrust into. He lacks the lube from the condom, and unlike last time, he hasn’t just been fucked. It’s probably not going to be smooth going. Yasha thinks that she might want to bring some lube next time.

With that thought, she fucks into him.

329 is silent, but Yasha moans. It feels incredible. Cheap condoms really do suck. There’s nothing between them; flesh presses against flesh. Not slick enough, but the heat and sensation more than make up for it. She plunges straight in, like penetrating a mass of meat.

Every little sensation rushes straight from her organ to her brain. Damp heat and softness, and tiny undulations. This time, Yasha can easily feel the omega’s reproductive cavity, to one side of the rectum wall, leading to the uterus, not really that deep. She adjusts her angle, bumping against its tightly furled entrance. 329 doesn’t say anything, only grips tight to the edge of the bed.

Fuck into the uterus and pound those omegas, they’ll love it, claim the erotic novels. But from 329’s stiffness, as if facing down a deadly enemy, he seems to expect pain instead of pleasure. Will it hurt? Yasha feels a light curiosity. She wants to try.

She aims there and slams in.

She doesn’t get through the first time. That aperture really is tight; it seems as if it only relaxes during heat and childbirth. Yasha tries a second time, a third, finally succeeding in forcing the tip in. 329’s thighs are shaking, his toes curled. Teeth gritted, he shivers. His body suddenly clenches, like a clam trying to close its shell.

The clam can’t close; Yasha’s still in there. The sensation is desperately intense, like there’s a mouth inside sucking at her. She nearly comes right then and there. Dazed and dazzled, her hips keeps thrusting like they’ve taken on a life of its own. 

It takes a while before she can pay mind to the outside world again. She first sees a hand, a hand gripping the headboard, the nails digging into the wood, the knuckles whitening with force.

329 is clearly desperately trying to endure.

He’s still not making any sound, his teeth gritted, his eyes blinking, his gaze wandering; who knows what he’s thinking to distract himself. Yasha thrusts again, pulling out before shoving back into his reproductive cavity with a pop. His chest heaves violently. He squeezes his eyes shut, sweat trickling along his face. He’s so good at enduring. It provokes Yasha’s sadistic urges.

She slams in and out, hard, wanting to know what it takes to make 329 cry or fight. She’s at once curious and impatient. She stuffs her fingers into his mouth; he doesn’t dare bite her, and can only open his mouth, no longer able to keep his cries bottled up.

He sounds so good when he’s loud.

329 makes pained, choked-back cries, clawing at the bedframe, slick with cold sweat. He feels fantastic to fuck. He sounds fantastic when he cries out. He must sound really good begging her to stop. Sadly, he won’t beg. Is he not in enough pain? Yasha doesn’t think that he'd be too dignified to beg at this point.

When she’s done, 329 lets out a long breath, his Adam’s apple bobbing, looking exhausted. Yasha suddenly understands. He doesn’t beg only because he doesn’t think begging would serve any use. He might as well save himself the effort.

Her cock finally softens and slides out, cloudy fluid slowly trickling out in its wake. Yasha gazes at the mess, full of the joy of marking her territory. There’s still an itch in her heart. She really wants to see blood; after all, with meditech, healing him would take mere minutes. But when she looks up, she finds that 329 is back to his usual state.

Yasha’s breathing hasn’t settled, but 329’s has. His expression is once again neutral, his open eyes like empty caverns. He stares at some point in the void, as if today were the same as yesterday, tomorrow the same as today, whoever on top of him the same. As if making love to him was no different than giving him a beating. His spirit drifted elsewhere, in another plane, wearily celebrating one more calamity survived. It was a sort of…rejection, a rejection that you don’t know how to put to rights.

He wasn’t like that earlier, when they were talking. He looked at Yasha’s eyes then.

This isn’t any fun.

Yasha kisses his shoulder, thinking that perhaps next time she shouldn’t make it too painful for him.


	5. Chapter 5

If you look closely, you can spot one particular scar on 329’s abdomen, not particularly obtrusive, hidden among a wide variety of other scars. But the shrapnel that left the scar had nearly damaged his spine and left him paralyzed.

At least, a normal person would have been paralyzed by such an injury; the meditech devices of the upper classes could quickly heal this kind of puncture without even leaving a scar. As for 329, if he’d actually taken a hit on the spinal column, he certainly wouldn’t have managed to hang on to life until now. He’s fortunate that the shrapnel had gone aslant, but in the eyes of most, it would have been better to be hit in the spine.

The shrapnel had pierced 329’s reproductive system, preventing him from being marked or bearing children.

He doesn’t remember when he got this scar, but he does remember the grief-stricken faces that had surrounded him when he awoke. The doctor told 329 with heavy solemnity that he would never become an alpha’s omega, never become a mother. Some wept; others promised that they’d keep 329’s secret for him. The atmosphere in the room had been oppressive, making 329 feel rather awkward. He felt bad for celebrating the fact that his arms and legs had remained intact amid all the dismal mourning.

What’s the point? Being marked or bearing children wouldn’t change anything. Even the omega who’d married the most powerful alpha alive, and given birth to the future most powerful alpha alive, remains voiceless and faceless to the world. The Consul only brings his ‘Crown Prince’ onstage.

329 thinks it’s pretty great that he doesn’t need contraception. Abortion can’t be good for your health.

Anyway, one load of semen directly inside him isn’t going to affect him any. The alpha gave him shots, which completely removes the need to keep condoms with him. It’s a pity he can’t resell them to the black market brothels. They don’t like trouble; they steer clear of Exiles.

Time passes. Gradually, the temperature drops.

The discomfort starts in the morning for 329, headache, drowsiness. For the past few days, the factory where he works nights has gone into overtime to fulfill a shipment. He’s been staying up for days in a row, and combined with the cooling weather, he’s probably caught himself a cold. He mechanically stocks merchandise, his thoughts sluggish, as if sleepwalking. An alpha grabs his ass under the pretense of getting something, and he doesn’t even react. His coworker yells at the pervert. It’s like waking from a dream; 329 thanks his coworker, who only gives him a disdainful look and turns away. It seems he simply doesn’t like letting this sort of thing pass, rather than having any desire to help an Exile.

The minority of people treat Exiles like their stress outlets; of the rest, most either regard them as roadside garbage, or a plague. To be ignored or abused is 329’s daily bread and butter. At this point, he doesn’t bother wondering where the hatred comes from.

329 doesn’t eat lunch, instead using his noon break to take a nap. He’s starving in the afternoon, but a lot more alert. The trade-off is worthwhile; he’s seen more than one sleep-deprived worker get caught in the machines. Sometimes they survived, but for 329, losing an arm and the money for treating the aforementioned is more than enough to land him a one-way ticket to the Omega Welfare Center.

In the evening, he heads for his storage locker, and discovers it’s been pried open. The compressed biscuits and shoes inside have disappeared without a trace. When he goes to return his work shoes, the manager tells him that she’ll lend him a pair if he sucks her cock. 329 tells her never mind and walks home barefoot.

At least he still has his socks, even if there’s holes in them. And since he always walks to and from work, he knows which roads are in decent condition. He can get some food first, then stop by the landfill on the way to see if they have any wearable shoes.

And then, he realizes that he’s not going to have night shift.

It’s the alley going to the grocery store. 329, standing at one end, spots Yasha standing at the other. She’s wearing a windbreaker. She waves at him, smiling. 329 stops, and the girl jogs over to him.

“Good evening!” she says, followed by, “You must be hungry. Let’s go eat!”

She names a destination, several hours’ walk away.

“It’s pretty far…” 329 says hesitantly.

“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a ride,” says Yasha.

He’s off his game, 329 thinks to himself. Of course she couldn’t have walked all the way here. She presses her key. The air ripples, and a motorcycle appears in the alley, stopping at Yasha’s side.

It doesn’t look at all the sort of ride for a petite young girl. It’s huge, sharp-edged, vicious, gleaming with metallic coldness, hovering just above the ground. Yasha reaches out a hand for it, and the motorcycle crouches flat, tilting forward, like a horse for its rider. Yasha climbs on and tosses a button-like object to 329. Dazed, 329 grabs it. Yasha demonstrates by clipping the other “button” to her left ear; a helmet appears over her head. 329 follows her example. The helmet that appears is light as paper, quite form-fitting. He climbs onto the motorcycle, sitting behind Yasha, but can’t find anywhere to hold onto.

“You can hold onto my waist,” Yasha advises him warmly.

Very carefully, 329 does so. There’s silk ribbons on her clothes; he can’t avoid them no matter how careful he is. The grime on 329 rubs off onto Yasha’s expensive attire. She doesn’t notice, but 329 can’t help but tense when he does.

“I may not get to fly a real plane, but at least I can ride this.” Yasha adds, “I modded it myself!”

She hasn’t turned on the ignition yet, as if waiting for something. 329 pauses, realizes, then says, “That’s really cool.”

Yasha laughs happily. With a press of her foot, the motorcycle shoots forward.

329’s arms wrap around her waist. He’s worried he’ll pull her out of her seat, but his concern is quickly proven unnecessary. Both of them remain steadily seated; this vehicle probably has some kind of safety tech. The motorcycle hovers a few meters above the ground, accelerating rapidly, like an arrow leaving the bow. And Yasha is a motorist with little restraint, treating the alley like a racetrack.

Wall after wall rushes toward them, suddenly whirling aside moments away from their faces. They scrape corners around every kind of architecture, weave through every kind of narrow passage. The alpha is showing off her driving technique. It’s enough to make most people’s hearts leap into their throats, and 329’s heart is racing too. Something wants to burst out of his throat, an exhale, a shout, a heart.

The motorcycle helmet protects his head, allowing him to open his eyes against the wind. The familiar dirty alley is dashed away behind him; everything around them resembles theater curtains being whisked away at high speed, a blur of color and lines. They turn, wheel, struggle free from the ground. Stagnant air turns to wild wind, cold as it whips past, but lifting his spirit on its wings. Going too fast, everything is left behind, like gravity, like all the plodding muddle in his head. They’re thrown aside, and 329 is suspended in the air, like he’s flying.

Even with a destination this far away, at their speeds, the journey is soon over. The motorcycle brakes, and 329 returns to earth. Yasha jumps down first. Seeing him still dazed in the backseat, she takes off her glove dashingly and offers him a hand. She exclaims the moment she touches his skin. Only now does 329 realize his exposed skin is so cold it’s numb.

“I should’ve brought you a jacket,” Yasha says, vexed.

329 is now dismounted, feet on the ground, acutely aware of the weight of his body. His senses having returned from the earlier sojourn of his thoughts. Once again, he’s hungry. He has enough wits about him now to notice where they are. A high-class restaurant, with two waitstaff standing outside the door.

“Exiles aren’t allowed,” 329 says.

“Who would care?” says Yasha dismissively, pulling him in.

The waitstaff open the door for them and bow at ninety degree angles. Maybe there really isn’t anyone who would care, so long as 329 is brought in by someone like Yasha. The floorboards are as polished as a mirror, yet not slippery to walk on. The pattern on the floor morphs slowly. 

329 looks down, first at Yasha’s brogued oxfords, then at his socks. His toes stick out from the holes. He probably looks like a monkey on a princess’s leash. If Yasha wants to show him off to guests, she should at least give him a pair of shoes.

Unless she brought him here to be consumed.


	6. Dinner

329 looks up, observing the dining environment—not that he thinks he can actually escape if something goes wrong. The place is quite spacious; the waitstaff stand straight and give identical smiles. The main hall is a blaze of lamplight. As far as he can see, they’re the only two guests. Yasha leads him straight to the table at the very center. The moment they sit down, a waiter appears to greet them, delivering the menu with effusive smiles.

“What would you like to order?” asks Yasha. “I recommend the orange-light crab. It’s a chef’s specialty here.”

There’s only two chairs at this table; they sit across from each other. It looks like no one else is coming. The girl gazes earnestly at 329; he has no choice but to look down at the menu. It’s written in incredibly florid cursive calligraphy. He can’t understand it.

“You can eat orange-light crabs?” he says.

The mutant creatures have hard, thick exoskeletons. From the shell to the meat inside, their radiation content is horrifying. Hunters hate them. They form packs, can jump five meters into the air, and don’t even contain any profitable parts to extract.

“As long as you process them properly,” says Yasha, giving the waiter a nod. He bows, takes two steps back, and retreats speedily.

She starts to talk about the procedure for processing orange-light crabs, from the mechanical shell removal to the repeated separation treatments for the crabmeat. Her conversation flows smoothly, refined yet humorous; she fully lives up to the role of host. Yet this chat has a meticulously polished flavor to it, different from how she normally speaks. 329 doesn’t know if there’s a reason behind it, or if all upper class people are like this at the dinner table. And then he remembers that he doesn’t actually know what Yasha is “normally” like. They don’t know each other that well.

The waiters wheel over a platter so enormous it takes both of them to carry it to the table. When the lid is lifted, a light aroma drifts out. A car-sized orange-light crab, after treatment, is reduced to a small dish of transparent flesh, with a few side limbs the thickness of bamboo poles arranged beside it. Yasha takes up the dining knife and the mallet from the table, efficiently dismembering a leg and setting the meat on 329’s plate.

“Bon appetit!” she says.

The girl makes no move to eat. After she peels out the crab meat, she wipes her hands and sits there watching him. 329 gives up on trying to guess the motives of the rich and powerful. He takes up the fork, impales the entire strip of crab meat, and stuffs it into his mouth.

He’s barely eaten today; he’s hungry enough that he’s willing to eat anything. He rapidly gulps it down, and immediately gets the feeling that he’s desecrating a delicacy. Orange-light crabs, which even beggars don’t dare eat, become springy and flavorful after treatment. It’s delicious.

“It’s good, isn’t it?” Yasha says happily. “I love it too! I always save some space in the cargo hold for orange-light crabs. There’s machinery for processing meat in the unmanned planes. Sometimes I bring them straight back and cook them myself. Next time I can do it for you!”

329 looks up between chews. As if sensing what he doesn’t say, Yasha gives a small smile. “Not very alpha of me, right?”

329 immediately shakes his head. He needs to deny it out loud, but his mouth is full—Yasha’s been peeling more crab for him, mixing the solid meat inside the legs with the tender slurry from the torso, alternately dabbing on sauce or spreading on toast, lovingly setting down each in front of him in turn. Yasha waves a hand, indicating that he should continue eating. “That’s perfectly all right. You’re hardly the only one to think so!”

She wipes her hands again. In a moment’s time, she’s already gone through all the legs. She leans back in her chair, spoons herself some more crab meat, and starts to talk again.

“Mama thinks I should cut my hair. It’s been a year since I presented; Alphas shouldn’t keep their hair this long. But I like my hair—no way I’m cutting it.” Yasha grimaces, twirling a strand on her finger. “I’m the youngest child in my family. I have four older brothers and sisters, one beta and three alphas. They all thought I’d be an omega…but they would’ve been fine with that. There’s enough potential heirs already. Papa didn’t want to bother with raising another one, or maybe he was being considerate of Mama, so he let Mama take charge of my education. Mama was the one who brought me up. Papa’s a terror to my older siblings, but with me he’s happy to turn a blind eye. I’m really lucky.”

After eating three legs, 329’s stomach finally stops burning. He ate too quickly; he hiccups. Yasha immediately pours him a drink and hands it to him.

“Please wait, the soup will arrive shortly,” she says.

329 didn’t see when she ordered them, but dish after dish begin to arrive in twos and threes, always at the most suitable moment. She moves quickly, dining, helping 329 through foods he’d never seen before, threading conversation into every gap, and simultaneously somehow still managing to maintain perfect manners. The entire time, she watches 329, her gaze hot. It makes him prickle with unease; he swings between suspecting some secret tampering in the food she hands him, and expecting that halfway through the meal she’ll fuck him where he sits. Only after half an hour of uneventful eating does 329 realize that her heated gaze doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with sexual desire. It might be more akin to a child tossing down bread crumbs in the square, craning her neck to watch the pigeon eat.

Either way, this pigeon eats very well tonight.

The majority of the dishes are astonishingly delicious, or perhaps, extremely well-suited to his tastes, dishes he didn’t even realize he’d like before eating. One soup tastes deeply familiar, comforting. The alcohol in the sweet soup warms him all over, returning feeling to his hands and feet, filling his head with a humid haze. Yasha keeps talking, gradually losing the stately refinement of a host, gradually even losing even the sense of a main thread, wandering off topic left and right, like an ordinary chattering kid—the sort who runs you half to death.

And sometimes, you just need to talk.

“I’m…an only child,” 329 says softly. “My mama died really young. My pa was a hunter for more than a decade. He got badly sick. I was too young then to go hunting myself, so I washed the other hunters’ protective clothing.”

He regrets it almost immediately after he opens his mouth. There’s no point to saying this, no need. 329 waits to be interrupted, hoping his impulsive words will be drowned in her bright, clear voice. But the moment his mouth opens, Yasha’s mouth shuts. She listens with all her attention, leaning forward.

“Sounds really dangerous,” she says, after 329 falls silent. “That dust and radiation?”

“Not as dangerous as what the the real hunters went through,” 329 says, shaking his head. "Most hunters eventually die in the radiation zone, and even those who survive rarely escape radiation poisoning.”

“But some of them only become stronger. It seems miraculous,” she says.

“Only a small number of lucky people are immune to radiation poisoning,” answers 329.

“And then what happened?” Yasha urges. “You became a hunter too?”

“Yes,” 329 says simply.

That sounds right, but 329 doesn’t remember. That section of memory is blurry after the surgery. He became a hunter before he even presented, when he was about the same age as Yasha is now. It seems that his life was linked to his crime from very early on.

“I remember that for a while the government had a bounty on mutant heads. That was when the hunters were active in greatest number,” says Yasha. “The hunters had a song, called  _ We Bring the Heads Back _ , right?  _ We bring the heads back, might be theirs or ours… _ ”

Yasha starts singing. Her voice is sweet, but she has the tune down perfectly. The melody triggers 329’s memories. He remembers this, remembers this clearly. When he worked at the repair station, the hunters would return singing, banging on their weapons, slapping their battered modded planes. Complete strangers would sing together, like pirates in the stories of old.  _ We bring the heads back, might be theirs or ours _ … Yasha sings those two lines over and over, as if she only knows those two lines. 329, inwardly singing along, finally can’t resist continuing it for her.

“ _ …Sometimes in the backseat, sometimes on the shoulders, _ ” he sings. “ _ If I can’t make it, please bring them back for me, trade theirs for gold coins, return mine to my family _ .”

His voice is low and raspy, but more suited for this song than sweetness. Yasha listens, chin in hand, quietly humming along. It’s a strange feeling. When he was still a child, he, too, hummed along to the hunters returning in triumph. Many young cleaners would hum along in admiration, imagining themselves soaring out of the Protected Area, charging into that dangerous sky and returning with voices raised in song.

He’d once dreamed. He’d once raised his voice in song. But when his mind returns from its sojourn, it’s as if everything’s ended. There’s nothing left. Exiles are confined to specific districts. The area he can’t leave is still some distance away from the outskirts. There are no hunters here. His memories of this song remain at many years’ distance. He doesn’t know if the hunters still sing it anymore.

“It’s an old song,” 329 says.

“Not that old. You know it,” laughs Yasha.

“It’s older than you.” 329 thinks for a moment. “Maybe even older than me.”

“Songs and legends naturally outlive humans,” says Yasha. “Perhaps people will still be singing this song after we’re both dead.”

Her words startle 329. Sometimes she sounds like a spoiled brat, other times like a sage. Or maybe she’s neither. Maybe she’s simply her, and either label is a futile attempt from the outside to define her. For some reason, hearing her talk like this makes something loosen up inside him.

It’s an amazing meal. They eat for a long time; Yasha doesn’t call a stop, so 329 continues to eat steadily, wishing he had a second stomach to store all this food with. And as long as he doesn’t stop, Yasha doesn’t call a stop. They sit across from each other, extending the dinner deep into the night. There’s no one to rush them, no one to interrupt them, no fear of an angry boss or anything. It’s like lying under a lion’s paw, thinks 329, suddenly. You don’t have to worry about vultures anymore.

Yasha gradually falls silent. She watches 329, hand propping up her cheek, idly stirring at her orange juice with a straw. 329 watches her eyes go from round to half-shut, her head nodding. It makes him feel…he doesn’t know how to say it, only that he wants to laugh.

“I’m done eating. Thank you,” says 329.

“Ah, are you? You’re welcome!” says Yasha, blinking. She sits up straight and surreptitiously wipes away the drool of sleep. “Let’s go back!”

She stands up and waves over a waiter to talk to. She’s slightly overcompensating, the picture of chipper spirits, as if she never drifted off. Afterwards, she walks over to 329 and asks for permission to hold his hand; permission received, she takes 329’s arm, clinging to him like a little bird. “We don’t have to drive back,” she advises. “I need to go back for the night, but maybe we can take a walk around…huh, you’re not wearing shoes? Aren’t you cold?”

She only now realizes. 329 doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he looks at her. He doesn’t know how to answer.

Yasha hesitates after asking the question. She must have realized that no one willingly goes to work barefoot. “Please allow me to gift you a pair of shoes,” she says. “I’ll deliver them to your place tomorrow!”

329 really doesn’t have much faith in her common sense. If she gives him a pair of nice shoes, he’s certain to be robbed or even mugged. He politely declines her suggestion, telling her there’s no need, his own shoes are perfectly fine.

They ride the motorcycle back, the same way they came. Yasha actually doesn’t enter his place after him. 329 sounds her out by bringing up tonight’s bill (there’s no way he can afford it, and he doesn’t have any other way to repay her,) but Yasha shakes her head.

“It was my honor to dine with you,” she says. Abruptly, she blushes, and adds in a mosquito-like voice, “And I accidentally ate a little too much today. I’m, er, not in a condition suited for exertion…Good night! Sweet dreams!”

She gives him a swift smile, gets on her motorcycle, and is soon gone.

The next day, on the morning shift, the factory is one worker short. He hears there was an accident, the guy might lose his legs. 329 opens his locker. His shoes are inside. A card is tucked in the laces. There’s nothing written on it, only a pink  💗.


	7. A Dark Sex Scene That Didn’t Happen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Set after Chapter 5. Some dark porn premised on “what if 329 really were here to be consumed.” Gangbang, impending death, dark, angsty, absolutely could not happen in the main story. Can be read as 329’s nightmare.
> 
> Translator's note: Shout-out to the Discord folks.

Unless she brought him here to be consumed.

The restaurant is completely deserted, but she keeps going. Their destination isn’t the spacious dining area, or the labyrinthine corridors. Their destination is deeper, deeper down than that. 329 smells something sickly sweet. The lighting grows dim and sensual. Yet the alpha walks ahead of him with quick light steps, almost hopping, like a rabbit, leading the lost Alice back to her warren.

Of course, this isn’t a children’s story.

They stop in front of a door. It opens: light, sound, and smell assault him. The door divides two world, the outside so empty, the inside so full. The smell of alpha and omega pheromones is so thick it makes him ill. Unconsciously, 329 stops, like a deer in the headlights. But Yasha takes his arm affectionately and pulls him inside.

“That’s it? That’s all you brought?” a youth not much older than Yasha (an alpha, of course it’s an alpha) says, gaze sweeping over 329.

“What? He’s great,” Yasha laughs, unfazed.

“Unusual tastes,” says a twenty-something female alpha, as she caresses the dainty omega draped over her. “What’s so great about him? Durable and long-lasting? Dear, you’re slacking.”

“Hardly! I like him a lot!” says Yasha.

With that, she pushes 329 into the crowd.

And that’s that.

Two betas hose him down, a pair of twins, tall and sturdy and emotionless. 329 is stripped bare, his skin scrubbed red. They shave off his pubic hair and pull him out naked. 329 is shoved onto the floor. When one of the twins grabs his waist, he realizes, these two’s job doesn’t stop at cleaning him up.

They’re the stud horses in this game, not much different from 329, just here for others’ amusement. Their massive cocks swell in their hands, the dimensions formidable. Perhaps their owners gave them some surgical enhancement, to add a little extra pizzazz to the entertainment. A pair of hands seize 329’s shoulders; another grips 329’s waist. Lube-slicked fingers slide into his ass and throat. He gags. The fingers withdraw. A cock fucks into him.

They do it so neatly and efficiently, like greasing up a fleshlight. The foreplay is too brief, the lube too meager. The cock rams into his body like a steel rod. 329 sucks in an agonized breath, but the twins are silent. No one wants to listen to betas moan. They just want to hear the omega in the middle scream.

If they want him to scream, he’d better get screaming.

329 opens his mouth and starts to cry out, his voice juddering with the twins’ movements, at last turning into muffled nasal sounds—the beta in front of him pries open 329’s mouth and stuffs his cock down his throat. They stand up, one grabbing his arms and one grabbing his waist, one fucking his mouth and one fucking his throat, so that 329’s feet leave the ground, with nowhere to give him leverage. Two boiling hot masses of meat thrust into him as hard as they can. He’s squeezed between two walls of flesh. He struggles to breathe.

A pair of hands force apart his ass cheeks, and another pair tips up his chin, exposing the meat-colored mucous membrane to the light. The spotlight shines on 329. The music around him is languid and sensual. This is a public performance. The two cocks pound inside him, flesh slapping against flesh, even managing some sense of rhythm to the beat. In the shadows, someone snickers. The twins’ owner claps his hands. They change positions.

The cock in 329’s throat pulls out, but the one up his ass doesn’t. The beta behind him pulls him upright, but doesn’t let his feet touch the ground. He grips 329’s knees and pulls them apart, spreading his legs as far as they’ll go. This position causes 329 to slide downward, until he’s practically sitting on the beta’s cock. The beta walks forward a few steps, displaying where they’re joined to the countless eyes in the audience. Someone reaches out and touches 329, sharp fingernail digging into the warm membrane. The invasive sensation makes him shiver.

“How boring, he’s grown used to penetration,” they say scornfully. “Just goes to show that virgins are better.”

“Non-virgins have their own perks,” someone else laughs. “If you can’t fill ‘er up, fill ‘er more.”

The other twin walks over, pressing 329 against his brother’s chest. The twin inside 329 also tightens his grip on his legs. They hold him in place like the straps of an electric chair.

329 suddenly realizes what they’re about to do.

The cock inside him doesn’t pull out, but the other twin’s finger forcibly squeezes its way inside. His ass, just beginning to adjust, is stretched once more, full to the point of pain. 329 whimpers, not out of pain so much as fear, for what goes next.

One finger becomes two, stretching at his hole, pulling to create a little space next to the cock it’s wrapped around. A second cock presses against it. He’s being torn at, like a too-small plastic bag. They don’t care whether the bag will split, or how that ring of muscle contracts in terror. The second cock crams inside anyway.

“…!!”

329’s cry is soundless. His mouth is open, but he can’t breathe; even the rise and fall of his chest brings pain. The second cock is inside him. It’s too much, too full, too far. His hole is on fire. He’s torn asunder, pinned. His legs kick helplessly in mid-air, like a frog nailed to a board.

Even if he closes his eyes and holds his breath, time won’t stop. Being filled isn’t the end, but the beginning. Before the crowd grows impatient, the performers continue their show.

329 finally begins to scream.

The twins start moving. Their two cocks stuff 329 so full that any larger movement will cause one to get squeezed out, so they thrust by tiny degrees. 329 trembles with pain. They tear going in and catch going out. His lower body burns with agony. His intestines feel like a half-inverted glove. He doesn’t dare look down. The pain worms deep inside, as if splitting him in two.

The betas’ movements grow faster, harder. His tormented muscle has no strength left to resist, no strength left to protect his ravaged insides. Two long, thick cocks beat at his guts. He’s like a pulped vessel. Blood flows down his thighs, joining the sweat. He’s too full. His belly bulges in one spot, as if something’s thrashing in his abdominal cavity, about to chew its way out. The terrifying sensation of something nudging at his organs makes him sick to his stomach. He dry heaves, but his stomach is empty. 329 shivers amid hunger, but he’s so “full” he wants to vomit.

“For real, you broke him,” someone laughs.

“I think I can still make do,” says someone else. “Let me try.”

Both twins withdraw. A small length of intestine follows them. 329 moans. The one behind 329 is still holding onto him, like a mirror-bearer for the nobility of old. An alpha walks over and thrusts into his helplessly gaping hole.

The cock meets his wounds, pressing against the torn surface. It hurts so much he clenches again and again, almost like he’s pleasuring his violator. The alpha is neatly-dressed, with only his zipper pulled down. He slaps 329’s ass and sighs amid his spasms. “Adequate, I suppose.”

Blood makes for poor lube, greasy-textured when thrusting. The alpha pinches his nipple, yanking hard, using pain as his beast-taming whip. 329 is already doing his best to cooperate, but it’s not enough to satisfy him.

The alpha pulls out of him and takes something from his pocket.

New-style syringes are designed for portability, no long, terrible needle sticking out—the needle’s hidden on the inside. The alpha grabs 329’s hair, sets the little syringe against his neck, and presses.

A sting like a mosquito bite, and the pain suddenly disappears.

His torn passage no longer hurts. His stomach, spasming with hunger, no longer hurts. His bludgeoned abdomen and pinched nipples, likewise. The pain disappears without a trace, while his belly suddenly grows hot. Desire rises in him like a tide, as if he’s been thrown into heat.

No, it _is_ heat.

The drug-induced heat crashes into him, reaching its normal peak within seconds. Too fast. 329 moans, slick mingling with blood as it drips in long silver threads. His waist gives way. His hole opens and closes like a thirsty mouth. If there weren’t anyone to hold his legs in place, he might’ve started rubbing his thighs together.

“He smells so faint even in heat.” The disappointed voice seems to drift in from a great distance. “So Exiles really are like that after surgery.”

“What’s wrong with that?” someone says. “This way…”

329 can no longer make out what they’re saying. His body is scalding, as if running a high fever. His passage is soaked; slick drips down ceaselessly, forming a small puddle on the ground. But no one comes. No one touches him. They gave him too much when he prayed for less, and toss him to one side as he begs for more. Heat should come like the tide, one wave after another, but this time it’s a whirlpool closing over his head, and 329 doesn’t have the strength to struggle.

The emptiness torments him. He wants to be fucked, wants an alpha’s hormones, like he’s in the desert thirsting for an oasis. Every kind of bodily fluid drenches every inch of his skin, sweat, slick, saliva, rectal mucus, even tears. 329 sobs. His vision blurs. He’s trembling all over, wanting uncontrollably to touch himself.

They let go of his hands. He impatiently begins to masturbate. He pumps his cock, thrusts his fingers into his injured hole, but it’s not enough, not nearly enough. The twins let go when directed, tossing 329 onto the ground. An alpha laughs somewhere nearby, saying, “If you want to get fucked, you need to put in more effort.”

Exiles undergo a procedure so that the scent of their heat can’t drive alphas berserk, so the only one descending into a hell of need is 329. He crawls toward the nearest alpha, babbling things along the lines of _please fuck me_. He sucks his cock. He’s kicked to the ground. At last, he gets what he wants. The pleasure of penetration is as intense as lightning; for a moment, it even splits apart his need, granting him clarity, and an intense disgust at what he’s doing. In the next instant desire enslaves 329 once more. He moans loudly, his toes curling in pleasure.

All his nerves seem concentrated in his groin. Amid spine-melting pleasure, he jerks himself off, until his hand is once again pinned in place. The alpha laughs in satisfaction, ordering him _wag your ass_. He does it. It’s a hard challenge, when his lower body feels anesthetized. His legs are wobbly with pleasure; he even struggles to stay on all fours, when sweat slicks his knees. The alpha grows impatient at his clumsy movements. He grabs 329’s waist and starts to thrust violently.

The alpha fucks straight into his reproductive cavity, plunging through the passage made plush and loose by heat, fucking straight to his cervix. 329 shrieks. The sensation is so powerful it’s terrifying, as if his organs are being caressed, and yet it feels so good, it shouldn’t feel this good. When the alpha’s knot begins to swell, his whole body convulses.

The swelling knot presses against his prostate. Orgasm slams into him, tears him down, destroying any capacity for thought. 329 can’t even close his mouth. He drools uncontrollably. His eyes roll back in his head. His body goes slack after it goes rigid, sliding to the floor, like a puddle of soft clay. The alpha moves back, and he’s pulled back with him, like a dog being mated on the street. Whether because the position is wrong or because 329’s produced too much slick, the alpha’s cock pops out of him.

In the shadows, the audience roars with laughter. The alpha’s humiliation enrages him. He sticks a needle into 329 a second time.

The world fades to white in an instant. He can’t hear anything; he can’t tell if he screams. A tide of pleasure like nothing he’s felt pulls him in, tosses him up, then slams him apart against the sea bottom. His brain is melting, as if all that’s left in his body is his intestines and his genitals, as if the person is only an accessory to sex. 329 wants to be fucked, he wants to be fucked straight into the womb, to be torn, to be fucked into pulp. Nothing else matters. Only a tiny piece of him stubbornly resists, curled up in one corner of his consciousness, full of horror.

There’s another omega here, one who’d come here before him. She lies on the floor not far from him, facing the ceiling, unmoving, like a dead fish. Her chest isn’t moving, or maybe it’s just moving too faintly, please let it just be moving too faintly.

329 loses track of minutes, or maybe tens of minutes, hours. People come inside him, but the heat won’t go away. He cries out until his lungs are wrung dry, until his throat can’t make sound. Too far, too much. 329 barely struggles free of the haze, scrambles behind the sofa on all fours. His betters laugh, as if watching an ant flee. He’s pulled out by the ankles. Someone takes advantage of the momentum to ram straight into his body, cock smoothly thrusting in to the hilt. The scalding hot rod presses against his innermost depths. It’s like stepping on a pressure point, instantly crumbling all of 329’s resistance. He trembles, unconsciously lifting his hips, like a cat in heat. That’s what he is, in truth.

 _Stop_ , he thinks, full of fear. _No, don’t, save me._ His overburdened heart hammers madly in his chest. 329’s terrified, terrified that he’s going to die here. But who can tell? Who’d believe it? The omega’s wet like he’s pissed himself. He’s flushed all over, his ass fluttering; he responds eagerly to whoever comes to fuck him. “Insatiable whore,” they say.

The crowd’s focus finally shifts from him. A new toy has arrived. 329 can finally crawl offstage—his entire lower body is numb, he can’t stand at all—toward the girl on the sofa. Yasha sits there, eating fruit with a toothpick. She brought him to this hell, but she’s also the only one 329 knows here. They talked before. She said she liked him.

 _Please, please, save me_ , he says. _Don’t let them kill me…_

No sound comes out. He’s too dehydrated. He’s completely lost his voice.

The young alpha eats her fruit, picking up chunks with a toothpick. She regards at 329 patiently, as if interested in knowing what he’s saying. But at this point, another alpha walks over and puts her hand on 329’s shoulder. She looks at 329 and politely asks if she can borrow him for a moment. She sounds like she’s asking whether she can take one of the fruit platters in front of her.

“Go ahead!” laughs Yasha. “Have fun.”

He’s going to die here.


	8. Heat

Unfortunately, his discomfort from the day before was not the first signs of a cold.

329 realizes this the evening of the next day. The old injury on his abdomen is beginning to ache dully. The pheromones in the air clamor much more than before. His skin grows sensitive, heralding impending heat.

For him, heats, normally quarterly for omegas, come chaotically. Sometimes he gets two in one season; once, they arrived barely a month apart. His last heat was two months ago. He’d locked himself in his room for three days, and lost his previous job over it. This time, he has enough time to ask for time off. His boss looks at him suspiciously and refuses his request to leave early.

“You don’t smell much different,” he says, with the air of someone rebuffing a clever freeloader. “Don’t think you can get special treatment just because you’re an omega. Get back to work!”

329 still smells the same, unlike other omegas, who can drive alphas berserk with their heats. Exiled omegas receive extra surgery; they still go into heat, but that becomes their problem and their problem alone. Their scent change is no longer enough to cause disruption—for the sake of public safety, of course.

Good suppressants are too expensive for 329, and the ones from the black market brothels have serious side effects. He doesn’t dare take the risk. But he also can’t afford to lose his job twice in one quarter.

It’s late at night when he leaves work. The flame in his belly grows harder and harder to ignore. The alphas in the subway car keep looking at him. His scent is finally changing, thickening. It’s quite attractive to alphas, not so attractive as to make someone lose all reason, but enough to make an excellent excuse and an “I’m here” signal flare. 329 hurriedly leaves, so that he doesn’t become a coworker or passerby’s nighttime amusement.

Fluid continues to flood out of him, turning his trousers into a sticky mess. As he walks quickly, his nipples grow erect from the friction from his clothes. The sensations of hunger and cold are gradually disappearing, leaving only his body’s cravings. Towards the end, he starts to run, hoping the cold wind can snatch the heat from his skin. His room grows closer and closer. He’s only half a street away, cutting through the last alley, when someone pins him against a wall.

“Look what I found!” she chortles. “An omega in heat!”

The alpha smells of alcohol. A drunkard, but not so drunk she can’t get hard. Her nose shoves at his neck, sniffing back and forth, like a feral dog rooting through a dumpster. 329 can feel something prodding against his ass. His legs are wobbly; subconsciously, they part. 329 shuts his eyes and says, “The condoms are in my pocket.”

The alpha guffaws, and slurs that he’s a slut gone out looking for a fucking. And then she says no, she’s fucking straight into his guts, she’ll knock him up with her seed. She tears at 329’s trousers. It’s hard going. She pulls out a switchblade, preparing to cut the fabric loose.

329 abruptly shoves her aside, dodging the knife. The drunkard falls over. Cursing, she grabs 329’s ankle and yanks him to the ground. In a rage, she pounces, slapping him about the head. “What are you playing at?” she roars. “Wandering outside late at night. Don’t tell me you weren’t looking for a fucking! When your kind goes into heat you’d climb on a dog!”

Give it a while longer, and maybe 329 would be seeking anyone’s help, as long as they don’t hurt him too much. Give it a while longer, and maybe he’d no longer be able to tell what’s capable of hurting him. Hormones will turn him into an animal. But he’s not there yet. 329 pushes her aside, climbing to his feet. Taking care of a drunkard isn’t hard, but…

“You wanna take another step?” The drunkard raises the switchblade, aiming it at her own arm. “You run, Exile, and I’ll report you tomorrow for assault. They’ll send you straight to the Welfare Center! I don’t have an omega. When the time comes, I’ll be able to fuck your ass for ten credits!”

329 stills.

See, there’s the problem, she can. She doesn’t even need to provide particularly sound evidence; the Enforcers who hate the new Exile Laws will take care of things for her. This kind of thing isn’t rare. Sometimes 329 can’t fight back. Sometimes he doesn’t dare fight back.

The alpha gets up, cursing. She grabs 329 and slams him against the wall. It looks like she’s still angry at being shoved aside by an omega. Before she takes off her pants, she lifts her hand to slap him again.

“Please don’t.”

A bright beam of light pierces the darkness, shining straight onto the alpha’s face. The drunkard startles, hurriedly shielding her face with a hand.

The bearer of the light walks into the alleyway. The beam continues to sway across the drunkard’s face, forcing her to squeeze her eyes shut. When they’re finally close enough for the drunkard to see, her embarrassment instantly turns to anger.

“Keep your nose out of my business!” the drunkard harangues. “Little brat, don’t even have hair in all your places—”

She doesn’t bother with manners, because there’s only one person, a petite girl. She’s well-dressed, and well-dressed people often fear to get dirty. The girl fiddles with her wristcom as she draws closer, the picture of someone afraid of trouble. Wave a knife around, and she’ll run off.

So the drunkard continues to cuss at her. She topples over mid-sentence.

“I’ve never used it on a person before. The effect is a little tricky to control.” Yasha shows 329 her wristcom, smiling apologetically. “But now she won’t be able to report you.”

The fallen woman is foaming at the mouth, her face turning blue. 329 stares at the ground numbly. Yasha walks over and looks down. “So many people die of alcohol poisoning each year,” she sighs. “Alcoholism really is a menace.” Then she smiles at 329. “Don’t worry, I’ve hacked the surveillance.”

“There’s surveillance here?” 329 looks up at the dilapidated alley.

“Where isn’t there surveillance?” Yasha says, matter-of-fact. She takes 329’s arm warmly. “You don’t look so good. Allow me to take you back!”

She holds onto 329’s arm, letting him nearly collapse on top of her. After this mess, his knees are already struggling to support his weight. With Yasha drawing close, her pheromones draw close too. He can finally confirm that the grass scent was probably just perfume. Yasha’s actual pheromones smell like milk.

A milk-scented alpha.

It’s pretty funny, but there’s no room in his head for laughing, just like there’s no room to wonder whether the person on the ground is dead or alive, or how dangerous the person beside him is, how badly she can hurt him. Yasha helps him back to his room. He barely manages to hold on long enough; he starts kissing her the moment the door is shut. Yasha’s eyes widen, as if startled, and then she responds immediately. She kisses back and takes off 329’s pants at the same time, pulling his jeans to his knees. Inside, his underwear is already soaked.

His underwear is trouble to remove, like it’s coated in glue. With some yanking and pulling, the saturated fabric ends up around his ankles along with his jeans, caught on his shoes. 329 can’t kick them off straight away, and he’s past caring. He strips off his shirt, lies down on the bed, and says, “Fuck me.”

Yasha complies. 329 moans as she enters him, jerking back toward her cock. The empty void inside him is filled at last. Milk-scented pheromones envelop him, soothing the heat of passion, yet making him want more. His thighs are wobbling, his lower body too weak and boneless to carry his weight. Yasha flips him over, making him lie on his back on the bed.

“So you  _ can _ get hard,” the alpha pants, gripping his cock.

329 is sopping wet at the same time he’s hopelessly hard. His rigid cock juts, pressing against his belly. Now that she’s discovered this, there’s probably trouble waiting for him in the future. But that’s a matter for later. 329 doesn’t want to think about it.

Honestly, Yasha can’t spare the attention either.

The man’s nothing like his usual state. He’s flushed all over, panting rapidly, expelling white fog and moans. He’s wet with sweat from head to toe, the lines of his muscles rising and falling on his glistening skin, like a powerfully built fish. It’s dazzling. Her omega is squirming under her, begging for more, deeper, harder. His pheromones smell of dark chocolate. They must be liqueur chocolates, she thinks, to be so intoxicating.

He was always so meek and distant. Yasha, an inexperienced connoisseur, had thought that “strong and silent” was the most delectable flavor. Now, with his legs clamped around her waist, his ass gyrating of his own volition, Yasha’s discovering that “wanton” also makes her salivate. The way he looked biting his lip evoked tenderness, yet his cries and continuous pleas also makes her blood heat and surge; the way he looked enduring pain was gorgeous, the way he looks as pleasure steals his self-control is incomparably adorable—truly, he sets the standard for perfection. He  _ is _ the standard.

329’s voice can’t be called sweet. Its raspiness always carries a sense of repressed emotion, or the roughness of a sob. Yasha thinks it’s sexy as hell. His body sucks at Yasha’s organ. Her thrusts punch out nasal sounds of endurance, and when she withdraws he makes needy moans. Yasha bends down and licks his nipple; he jumps as if touching a live wire, thrusting his chest forward to greet her licks and bites. The engorged nub of flesh is as stiff as a little piece of cartilage, lightly salty to the taste. His omega’s pheromones envelop her. It drives her mad.

She’s once again in the vicinity of his reproductive cavity. This time, the aperture isn’t tightly shut; it sucks at her, half rejecting and half inviting. Yasha’s heart itches. She asks, “Want me to go in?” 329 nods frantically, saying  _ yes, please, do it, fuck me. _

She puts her back into it, ramming into that opening. The sphincter inside is looser than last time. Fucking into it feels amazing as hell. Yasha’s head spins; she knots immediately. 

And under her, the omega spasms all over at the powerful shock of sensation, like a stuck cassette, swallowing down all his sounds. She sees his mouth gaping, the pink tongue trembling inside, saliva trickling out uncontrollably, the Adam’s apple bobbing. She worries if he can still breathe.

Yasha pushes him gently. “Breathe, don’t choke.” 329 still doesn’t respond, as if he hadn’t heard. Yasha gives him another push. “Say something!” she pants.

His lips move, as if he’d heard. He licks his lips and raggedly begins. “Deeper, fuck me to death…ah…I’m a stretched-out whore, a bitch anyone can fuck…a dirty animal…I’m not worthy…please…please…”

He’s finally making sound, but he’s still shaking, his moans more like sobs. This time, 329 isn’t clutching at the bedsheets. At some point, he’d covered his eyes with the back of his hand. When Yasha pulls his arm aside, she finds that he’s actually crying.

He might have been crying for a while. Tears and sweat mingle together, indistinguishable. Yasha pulls his hand away. He opens his eyes, not looking at Yasha, not looking at anything, just opening his eyes. His blue-grey eyes hold desire, yes, but something else. Yasha recognizes it. These are eyes despairing to the point of surrender.

It freaks Yasha out. If an alpha’s knot were capable of receding halfway through, it might have scared her soft. “What’s wrong?” says Yasha. “Are you okay? Did I hurt you? Where does it feel bad?”

—The correct answer is, it feels great, your cock is too good, I’m crying it feels so good.

In fact, 329 can’t imagine what crying it feels so good is like. He’s never experienced it. Heat brings on a state of madness, but it can’t be called pleasure, just unrestraint, like leaping from a high location.

If he can’t control his heat, then he has to accept it, that’s all he can do. Green eyes, red hair, the colors are spiraling, the words are spiraling, light as thistledown, sticking to him, penetrating into the lobes of his lungs, he can’t get them off. Laughter, cold laughter, loud laughter, mocking laughter.  _ It’s torture if we don’t fuck him, slutty bitch, raise your ass, yeah, like that, hahahaha! Look at him! They have to be crazy to let an omega lord it over them. Who knew from looking at him that he can make this kind of face? Spread your legs, if you want a fucking you need to put in more work! Lowly animal, you think you deserve it…” _

He’s crying. At a time like this of course he can cry, he can moan, he can beg, because that’s what an omega does, because his dignity is already dashed to the ground, his shame entirely in the open. A few tears don’t make a difference. Moan louder, kneel, wag your ass, lie down in the mud, and they won’t keep stepping on you. If you admit you’re a dog, they won’t continue to strip away the part of you that’s a man. No one cares, they don’t care about him, and he doesn’t care about them. Part of him hovers above this preposterous farce, watching himself howl, sob, beg. He’s not revealing any weakness; it’s only a fleshly body drowning in hormones and sensation, a lowly animal. He’s nothing, no hope, no disappointment. Everything went away with the surgery. So it’s all fine. He’s not here. No one can continue to trample on his soul. You can’t harm what doesn’t exist.

But Yasha grabbed onto him.

She pulled aside his hand, looked into his eyes, and said, panicked and at a loss,  _ are you all right, what happened _ , as if these physiological responses were worth caring about. He’s a beat slow to answer, missing the optimal opportunity. Now, 329 has no way of saying to her face that he was fucked too good. It’s a beautiful girl’s face; even dripping with sweat, it’s like a lily beaded with dew. She’s red in the face, her expression concerned, trying to ask, trying to comfort, trying to treat him like a person.

They’ve chatted. They’ve eaten together. She’s sat on the bed kicking her feet, she’s looked him in the eyes and talked to him, she’s taken his arm, she’s hummed along to his tune. “I modded it myself!” she said. “I have four older brothers and sisters,” she said. And then 329 told her about his parents. They practically know each other. 329’s stomach starts to violently spasm. Suddenly, he feels wrenchingly nauseous.

The senses of shame and self-respect he’d thought dead cry out mournfully. It’s like being murdered a second time. Tears flood out, and once again he covers his face with his hand. This time, no matter how Yasha pries, he won’t let go. The most comical part is, even as he sobs, he’s still in the midst of heat. His fluids seep everywhere. Below, he’s still sucking at her. As Yasha tries to figure out what’s wrong, due to her back and forth motions, the cock caught between them ejaculates.

See, whether it’s pleasure or pain, willing or unwilling, it ends this way, it’s always the same.

As he orgasms, 329 starts to laugh hysterically. It must scare the hell out of the alpha atop him. She sounds even more uncertain. “Does it hurt?” she asks. “Does it feel bad? I won’t stick it in there next time? …Do you want a drink of water?”

—No, it feels good, honestly. It’s been a long time since 329 came during sex. He curls up, covering his face, hoping she can spare him, stop asking questions, stop talking. He curls up, wishing he were alone, wishing he could disappear.

“I’m sorry, it wasn’t on purpose…I won’t go in there next time, okay?” the girl says weakly, clearly not understanding why he’s crying. He can’t fault her. Even if 329 tried to explain, he wouldn’t be able to.

Afterwards, Yasha stops talking. She just puts an arm around his waist, strokes his back. In the quiet room, his sobs are as loud as whipcracks. 329 struggles to regulate his breathing. He tells himself that this too shall pass.


	9. Night Wanderings

An omega’s heat comes once per season, lasting for three days, during which waves of need rise and fall like a tide. Without an alpha, the lulls between upwellings is very short, enough to torment someone to exhaustion. But with a participating alpha, it’s much less severe.

Yasha stays at the rented room for two nights, remaining at 329’s side for almost the entire heat. Sometimes she’ll leave for a while, but she always returns before 329 enters another upwelling. She pushes an air mattress to the side of 329’s folding bed, the same height as the cot, then layers on a thick blanket to create a big, soft bed. Yasha solemnly bounces atop it, as if to test its sturdiness. But then she rolls back and forth on the bed, which probably doesn’t have much to do with testing anything.

While she messes with the bed, 329 is in the lull between two peaks. His skin is still sensitive, but his desire isn’t as overwhelming as it is during an upwelling. He can calmly stand to one side, holding the cup Yasha gave him, drinking the energy beverage Yasha brought him. The hot drink tastes pretty good, even if he doesn’t know what it’s made of—329 doesn’t care to know, especially regarding the price. He looks at Yasha arranging the bed with the glee of someone going to summer camp. This luxury-raised girl shows nothing but curiosity toward experiencing life in a cheap apartment, remaining in high spirits all three days. Thank heaven and earth, she doesn’t poke her nose into the breakdown 329 had on the first night.

“It’s like a dream,” says Yasha one time, before they sleep.

Right then, she’s knotted inside 329. They lie on their sides, Yasha at 329’s back, head pressing against his back, fuzzy and warm. They’ve made it through three obscene days. To tell the truth, there’s not much they can do in a space this small. Yasha provides all the food (she doesn’t like compressed biscuits.) Sometimes she leaves to wash up (or clean up using her tech, who knows, either way she doesn’t use the bathroom here with its irregular hot water.) She doesn’t know how to do her hair, and asks 329 to tie it back for her; his handiwork is pretty unimpressive. 329 doesn’t think these couple days make for much of a dream fantasy. A ramshackle room and an an omega who smells nothing special. Adequate at best.

His heat smoothly runs its course. On the third morning, he finds Yasha and her air mattress gone without a trace. She leaves only a paper note. Like before, there’s no words written on it, just a heart emoji. 329 goes to work, feeling energetic and refreshed in a way that he hasn’t for a long time, a nice perk to having an omega’s body. His heat wasn’t like being in hell; this is honestly the first time, in his truncated memory.

For the entire next month, 329 doesn’t see Yasha. Sometimes he thinks of her; sometimes he even feels a strange sense of concern, wondering if such a young alpha might wind up with health problems from that level of debauchery. Then he realizes his worries are baseless. The elites even have STD vaccines.

More likely, she’s just sick of him, like a diner who eats too much of one food in one sitting and loses all appetite for it; even if they don’t swear it off forever, they might need a couple years before they can touch it again—if they still remember at that point. That’s just how it is with wealthy people looking for fresh amusement. They have too many options.

But the next month, Yasha appears with her motorcycle once more.

This time, it’s late at night. 329 is still awake because he’d received notice that afternoon. His wristcom had pinged to tell him of an incoming message; he ignored it, thinking it was junk mail, at which point the wristcom began to  _ ding ding ding _ without pause. 329 looked down. A message popped open:  _ You don’t need to go to work tonight. Please go to bed early. See you at midnight! >3< _

A few seconds later, the message disappeared. A few more seconds later, a new message popped open.  _ You saw correctly! Please get some rest? _ Like before, it deleted itself automatically.

So 329 was pretty sure who this was, and pretty damn sure he won’t be working tonight. He ate an early dinner, showered, and went to bed in preparation for the royal audience.

Yasha doesn’t look much different from before, naturally; even a teen in the middle of puberty won’t change much in just a month. She leaps off her motorcycle and asks 329, “May I?” With his assent, she slips gloves on his hands and ties a scarf around his neck. “Today’s going to be cold. We’re going to go high up.” She laughs. “Way high up.”

They get on the motorcycle.

At this hour, the streets are almost deserted. Even if they bull their way through, they don’t have to worry about running anyone over. She seems to have modded the motorcycle again; its movements are even more powerful. The engine roars like thunder, loud enough to wake people in a ten-mile radius. The alpha pays no mind, looking perfectly unconcerned.

Maybe she didn’t choose to come out at night for the purpose of stealth. Maybe she has other methods. Last time, racing on the street, no one had given them a second glance. 329 guesses that there’s some sort of optical device installed on the motorcycle, capable of turning it and its riders invisible. With that kind of technology, it wouldn’t be hard to hide sound either. 329 suspects that the motorcycle doesn’t need to be this loud at all; Yasha had made it this way out of nostalgic fondness.

That’s not to say he dislikes it.

He likes the lightning speed, likes the sensation of weightlessness when they round a corner, and likes the rumble of the motor as well. Some people like the sound of rain. Some people like the sound of wind. 329 likes the sound of a motor, maybe because he’d once worked at a repair shop. Civilian aircraft are always accompanied by a dull  _ tututu _ , like some kind of a signal, or a the call of a horn. He doesn’t remember how he became a hunter, but he still remembers how his father had carried him into the plane in his childhood.

He’d sat on his father’s knee, touching the indicator panel, the joystick vibrating in his palm. That bulky old flyer was like their household beast of burden, wordlessly and reliably carrying their weight. Back then, sitting atop his father, he’d craned his neck to look out the window, thinking that one day, he’d grow tall enough comfortably look out the window without anyone propping him up. Someday, he was going to fly.

“Please hold on tight!” says Yasha, in front of him.

The motorcycle accelerates again, so fast everything’s a blur. It’s the grand boulevard in front of City Hall; even late at night, there’s no shortage of vehicles. The speeding, levitating motorcycle weaves between the vehicles, faster and faster, faster and faster, straight for the City Hall building. In front of them there’s no room left, traffic hems them in on either side, but Yasha doesn’t slow, only hits the gas hard. 329 grabs on tight to Yasha, palms sweating.

A wall rushes toward them.

And then suddenly they’re going  _ up _ .

Up, down, left, right abruptly somersault, the wall becoming the ground, the night ahead. The hovering motorcycle rushes up the side of the City Hall, the front lifting, thrusters unfolding from the taillights. The vehicle, the wall, and their skulls all remain unharmed. They climb up the tall building, leaving the ground behind them.

Neither of them falls off the motorcycle, which has some kind of system to keep them secured in place. Yasha’s earlier words were less to warn him than to retrieve his attention. 329’s heart thumps madly in his chest. He looks behind him; the ground grows farther and farther away, the torrent of vehicles and night travelers becoming the crawl of ants. The sounds of people and cars fade; neon lights and headlights dissolve into shining ribbons. The farther they get, the less real it all seems, like it has nothing to do with him, like none of it matters.

The City Hall is the tallest public building in the Protected Area. They continue to climb, higher and higher. Soon, the pinnacle is before them; their vehicle rushes toward it as if approaching a gap in a bridge. Yasha whistles. “Let’s go!” she exclaims.

The vehicle shoots over the broken bridge.

The thrusters silent, the motor rumbling: that’s how the replica-antique motorcycle charges off the pinnacle. The vehicle runs out of road, and the front of the vehicle lurches, but it doesn’t smash against the building roof. The two sides of the vehicles fold up. A pair of wings emerge.

Yes, a pair of wings. Not rigid aeroplane wings, but bird-like, flapping, fucking-covered-in-metal-feathers wings. The vehicle wheels in the air, swoops downward, and at the lowest point in the arc, flaps its wings and takes off soaring. How do you describe this ride? It’s an antique replica, a creation of advanced technology, a steel pegasus from a child’s fantasy. The rider who’d transformed it whoops the shrieking laughter of a child on a roller coaster, wild and joyous.

329 wants to shout too; Yasha’s voice resonates with his throat. It’s as if he wants to shout, but when he opens his mouth, no sound comes out. He’s grown used to staying silent to stay safe, or faking sound to be left alone. Sound that actually belongs to him finds itself trapped in his body, unable to escape.

But what does that matter? They’re flying.

The steel pegasus takes them charging through the black of night, the entire Protected Area beneath their feet. They wheel and barrel roll, charge and turn, plunge then climb. The little alpha shows off her technique, a dazzling performance that only the two of them in its midst can see. The changes in acceleration should make his head spin, but 329 takes them in stride. It’s as if his body remembers, even when he doesn’t.

“I’m good at flying, aren’t I?” Yasha asks.

They’ve flown for a long time, criss-crossing the night sky. At last, the vehicle slows, gradually drifting upward; the roller coaster has become a ferris wheel. When Yasha calls to him excitedly, 329 answers honestly, “You’re very good.”

“I practiced for ages,” Yasha says proudly. “They won’t let me touch a real manned plane, so I built one myself.”

“Is this the first time you’ve flown for real? Isn’t that a bit…” 329 hesitates, then says delicately, “Not very safe.” 

The girl huffs in front of him. 329 doesn’t need to see her face to guess at her dismissive expression. She says, “Simulators can replicate practically everything, with over 99.7% verisimilitude. I’ve flown tens of thousands of times in a sim environment. I’ve even died hundreds of times. They say that ‘surviving a campaign makes you a seasoned soldier.’ Well, I’ve survived and gotten killed in so many battles that I’m practically a seasoned general!”

329 has heard of simulators, but he’d never imagined that the rich and powerful could imitate reality in their sim environments to such a degree. From Yasha’s tone, she seems to have experienced the complete virtual reality, without sensory dulling.

It’s surprising. 329 doesn’t know why she’d do that. Death under one hundred percent pain sensitivity can’t be pleasant. Yasha undoubtedly lives in luxury, pampered and spoiled. It’s hard to imagine why she’d choose to go through that.

“I like it,” says Yasha, as if she predicted his surprise. “It’s fun, but unfortunately not many people around me are interested. Look at the rebel army—they love to fly, from the common grunts to the commanders, from the runners to the fighters. All of them know how to fly a plane.”

That’s because anyone who doesn’t has no way of escaping from encirclement and annihilation, 329 thinks inwardly. He feels a familiar resignation. It’s like how the rich think that poor people dig through garbage for fun and amusement.

“To be honest, they wouldn’t even let me try the uncensored flying simulation,” Yasha says with a  _ hmph _ . “It’s not as if injuries in the sim environment actually exist.”

“But it’ll still hurt,” says 329.

“It’ll hurt for a little bit, and then it goes away when you leave the sim. It’s like a game. If you can earn experience without the penalty of death, isn’t that great? If you really can’t take it, you can delete that segment of memory,” says Yasha. “If your body doesn’t change, and you don’t remember anything, and you delete the record from the simulation, and no one else knows, is that any different from it never happening at all?”

329 instinctively feels that’s wrong, but he doesn’t know how to refute her.

He feels a faint sense of unease. Yasha often unsettles him, even frightens him. There is an enormous gulf between their perspectives, as if they look upon two different worlds. This alpha isn’t evil. She can even be called warm and affectionate, sweet and adorable, stylish and dashing. But every now and then, she reveals something alien. It’s like seeing scales and claws peeking out from under human skin.

She might be a good, flawless person, where “good” is measured by her standards. 329 can’t even begin to guess at her standards. She’ll break a man’s legs to return 329’s shoes, with a little card tucked in the laces, a pink heart on it.

Or maybe he’s just frightened of her power. Maybe he’s just afraid of the technology and authority that can so easily manipulate a man.

The sky fades at the edge, the night growing translucent. Visibility improves around them; he can see manmade clouds and patrol drones. The main city is a no-fly zone; patrol drones and the surveillance moon will shoot down all non-official aerial objects, including birds and balloons. Yet right now, they’re still in the air. The patrol drones fly by at a distance, paying no mind to them.

The vehicle slowly rises, at last reaching the highest point of the Protected Area. Any higher, and they’d hit the Shield. Outside of the Shield is the real sky, full of radiation and particulate matter. The surveillance moon hangs in the man-made vault of heaven; the laser-spitting cyclops is silent at the moment, its single eye tightly shut, like an inert piece of space garbage. As they fly past, Yasha reaches out a hand to rap on its steel outer hull. 329 badly wants to give it a kick. He resists the urge.

“This is the best location,” says Yasha. “In a moment, we can see the sunrise.”

“I thought the weather report said it’s going to rain?” says 329.

Weather in the Protected Area is fully under human control. Weather reports are actual reports, and whatever weather they state is whatever weather it’s going to be. At most, the adjustments are off once or twice a year.

“No, it’s going to be clear today,” Yasha answers simply. And then she says exuberantly, “The sunrise is most magnificent seen from the sky, especially when there’s these huge cloud layers. The sunlight makes the clouds blaze red in distinct layers, with all the colors roiling through, like a sea of lava. It’s stunning.”

A few scattered images flash through 329’s mind. He feels like he’s seen the sunrise from the sky before. The sky below, as clear as a lake. Fish-scale cloud layers electroplated with scarlet, burning across the sky like a wildfire. The blazing radiance of the rising sun. Even though the real sun has been buried behind the dense particulate for centuries, the man-made imitation still captures the imagination.

Dimly, he remembers the rumble of a plane, remembers grayish particulate around him. That’s right. He hadn’t been inside the Shield then. He’d been outside. Had flight outside the Shield not been banned yet? Or was that in fact the crime he’d committed? He doesn’t remember. But if he’d truly been condemned for staring into the sun, 329 doesn’t feel particularly regretful. That forbidden sky mesmerizes him.

The artificial sun rises.

“It’s beautiful,” 329 says quietly.

“Isn’t it,” Yasha says proudly. “I hacked those stupid drones so they won’t bother us. It’s a pity they’re such a downer to look at, even just hovering around. They’re so boringly identical. Civilian aircraft are much more interesting. They look much better when they’re flying.”

“Civilian aircraft haven’t been allowed to fly inside the Protected Area since the Third Airspace Ban,” says 329. “The ban was enacted over half a century ago.”

“But there have always been law-breakers,” laughs Yasha. “The rebel army sometimes flew. During the Easter Incident, their planes filled half the sky. They were magnificent, planes weaving between lasers and bullets. Eagle No. 27 broke through three layers of encirclements, downing nineteen planes in a single battle, taking six hits and still managing to ram into the statue of the Consul, while the pilot switched planes and escaped. He was incredible!”

She talks about the Revolutionary Army’s ace pilot, then talks about the Revolutionary Army’s organization and training, her face alight, her tone full of admiration. When she’s done, 329’s not sure how to continue the conversation. He’s forced to ask, “So you want to open up the sky?”

“Aren’t you more interested in knowing what I really think of the rebel army?” Yasha says, her insight sharp. “Because I praise them, but I call them the ‘rebel army’ and not the Revolutionary Army.”

Only with her laying it out in the open does 329 realize that he did mean it that way, just a little. But what’s the point of asking that? He doesn’t say anything. Yasha turns around and keeps going on her own.

“Let’s not talk about that. What a dull topic,” says Yasha. “But, those aerial tactics were beautiful, and those pilots were beautiful, charging at the Steel Battalion like moths into the flame. Wasn’t it beautiful, the way they looked, nosediving and crashing amid the dazzle of lasers? We can communicate our aesthetics without needing to persuade each other of anything. But politics isn’t like that.”

The motorcycle hovers in midair. Yasha changes position, sitting sideways, the better to hold 329’s arm. This lovable, terrible girl finds a comfortable position against him, not minding his silence. She sighs contentedly.

“It’s so wonderful,” she says. “Like a dream.”

_ What do you want from me? _ 329 wonders. He can’t figure it out, and he doesn’t dare ask.

To him, it really is like a dream. It’s not a nightmare, nor a sweet dream. Just a strange dream, that’s all.


	10. "Dating"

Yasha drops by from time to time.

Most often she appears in the evening, occasionally at noon, occasionally at dawn, occasionally late at night. Sometimes she walks up in a pair of fine leather shoes. Sometimes she rides up on her motorcycle. She takes 329 out, invites him to eat, makes love to him.

If you abstract away a huge, huge number of details, it sounds almost like dating.

They often go racing through the streets. Yasha even lets 329 drive sometimes, even though 329 doesn’t have a license. “I can teach you!” says Yasha. “You’re sure to be a fast learner!” Which is true, it turns out. He’s a fast learner, even if he’s not a fast driver. He doesn’t dare go tearing through the streets.

Yasha keeps urging him to go faster, saying “This motorcycle has the best safeguards! You can crash into City Hall and still be fine.” 329 tells her he’s afraid of hitting someone. Yasha tells him not to worry, she’ll take care of any bodies. With those words, 329 drives even more carefully. He never so much as hits a stray cat or dog.

They only go to one restaurant, the one with the really good crab. But every time they go there, the food is different, more suited to his tastes each time, so wonderful it’s startling. To be honest, it’s almost a little frightening. At first, some middling dishes would still appear on the table—middling, not unpleasant. Those dishes never appeared a second time, or even any similar dishes. 329 thought he maintained a poker face when eating, with no sign of pleasure or disgust, but the food keeps getting better anyway. He can’t find a single point of flaw. And it’s not just the food. The order and timing with which the dishes appear, the placement of the condiments, the temperature of the food and drink, even the material of the napkins, all grow increasingly pleasant, or rather, pleasing to him.

If it weren’t for the fact that technology hasn’t yet advanced to the point of mind-reading, 329 would be descending into a wide range of persecution fantasies.

“Don’t you like it?” Yasha astutely senses his hesitation.

“No, I do really like it…” 329 can only answer.

“That’s wonderful! I’m so glad!” Yasha smiles radiantly.

She’s a very considerate lover. Or maybe 329 is her favorite lover. At the minimum, 329 is one of her favorite lovers. 329 doesn’t think he’s the only one. Yasha always comes in a hurry and leaves in a hurry, as if she has many other people to visit. And every time they meet, her sexual skill and creativity grows by leaps and bounds. You could not tell this kid was a virgin less than a year ago.

Sometimes they make love on the motorcycle; the metal mount rumbles with vibrations, or bucks up and down like a wild horse. This time at noon, Yasha abruptly stops halfway en route to the restaurant. Below, the heads of passerby bunch and move along; vehicles come and go. It’s here that she pulls down 329’s pants. Grinning, she unzips his jacket and rolls up his underclothing.

It’s a hell of an indecent sight, an omega draped in an open jacket, t-shirt rolled above his chest, spreading his legs above a busy city block. Yasha blows him, licking him until his calves tremble. 329 bites down on the hem of his t-shirt, partly to prevent his clothes from sliding down and getting stained with fluid, partly to prevent himself from making sounds. The clamor of traffic continues. Not far away, surveillance cameras glint. He gets a deathgrip on the motorcycle; when he comes, he nearly tips over anyway.

“You won’t fall, I promise,” Yasha laughs.

Her ride, of course, has excellent anti-fall mechanisms, and excellent optical devices that can completely conceal the hovering vehicle. This bout of seemingly open-to-the-public oral sex won’t in fact be seen by anyone. But that’s not how it feels. From 329’s perspective, looking out, there’s nothing around him to hide behind. One of the taller pedestrians could raise a hand and touch the bottom of the vehicle. The conversation of passersby is clearly audible; maybe a single stifled whine from mid-air would be enough to earn a stray glance. It’s the middle of the day in a clamorous city district. Everyone is single-minded and bustling; and even an Exile could temporarily pretend to be just another busy passerby in the crowd.

After he comes, Yasha cleans herself up. She seems to have done it on a whim, without intending to finish everything here. They go to the restaurant as usual. 329’s hand is unsteady around his fork, probably because he’d gotten too wound up earlier. He’s still feeling the aftereffects of that excessive anxiety; everything is as tasteless as wax, and he has to make himself to eat until he’s full. He forces himself to respond to Yasha’s conversation, but she notices anyway, and asks him, concerned, if the dishes today aren’t to his taste. 329 immediately shakes his head. Yasha says, “Did my earlier actions trouble you?”

She’s not that easy to fool. 329 can only say it’s not her, it’s him, he’s not feeling too well. His answer isn’t quite a lie. The sex wasn’t bad. It’s just that the location and timing gave him immense anxiety. He kept telling himself that Yasha wouldn’t suddenly turn off the optical device; if they ended up exposed under broad daylight, Yasha would have more to worry about regarding her reputation as one of the elite, compared to a nameless Exile like him. But at the same time, 329 is quite aware that if she really got the urge to put him on display, she wouldn’t even need to deactivate their stealth. All she needs to do is push him off.

The motorcycle was only six or seven feet off the ground. The fall wouldn’t kill him. He’d simply appear suddenly in the middle of the street, his chest exposed, his pants pulled down, his cock sticking out. It’s the middle of the day in a busy city district. No one would come over to hurt him. They’d just exclaim, recoil, mock, cuss, take pictures. Nothing much. An Exile should be used to it all already. If 329 trembles at the thought, it’s purely his problem.

Maybe 329’s excised memories contain some kind of awful past incident, forgotten by 329 but not his body. His extremities and his stomach feel like masses of ice. If this were his own room, he might go to the bathroom and puke. But this is a high-class restaurant, and he’s not the only one here. So he stays put in his seat, slowly cutting apart his food and shoving it down his throat. 329 is very pragmatic; there’s no room in his life for picking and choosing. If he fussed too much over unimportant feelings, he wouldn’t be able to live. So it’s a problem with him. Yasha didn’t do anything wrong.

But his answer doesn’t seem to satisfy Yasha. She apologizes to him and tells him she won’t do it again. “If you don’t like it, you can tell me,” she says. Her expression is so sincere. He can’t tell if she’s disappointed.

“Okay,” 329 lies.

He won’t tell her, whether this time, next time, or one of the countless times in the future. He won’t admit his pain and ask for mercy. Yasha won’t know, so she can’t refuse. So all the pain she brings will be unintentional, unpremeditated. She’ll still be warm and affectionate, and fond of him, and even caring about his feelings. It’s just that she doesn’t know, 329 thinks, of course she doesn’t know, I’m hiding it from her. See, a person has to have some agency.

They get back pretty early. Seeing they have plenty of time today, Yasha decides to while away most of it in bed. She takes off 329’s clothes, circles her tongue on his areola, fuzzy braids rubbing against his chin, a little itchy. 329 pants underneath her; she moves steadily and rhythmically inside him. Before that, she licked 329 until he came for a second time.

Ever since she saw what 329 looked like genuinely aroused, Yasha has been enthusiastic about giving him pleasure, sometimes paying it more mind than her own. To call it “with no regard to hardship” or “without expectation of repayment” sounds kind of weird. It’s more like petting a cat, and deriving enjoyment from its contented purrs—but it’s still evidence of her warmth and affection. Outside of heat, it takes immense patience and skill to make him come. Few alphas are willing to perform oral sex on an omega. Compared to wasting so much time on foreplay, it’s a lot more convenient to inject a shot of catalyst to force a heat. The stuff is badly damaging to the body, but the scary part is, it’s not hard to get ahold of. The drugs that she could have bought with the money she’s spent on meals could send him into continuous heat until either his body or his mind broke.

Post-orgasm, his body is extremely sensitive, a bit like how it is in heat, but not as overwhelming. Her fingers are slim, her palms soft. Her hands glide across his skin, sending out ripple after ripple of warm tingling. Wherever she touches, it feels like an electric charge running through his skin, cozy and warm, astonishingly pleasant. Secretly, 329 thinks this sensation is better than orgasm. She doesn’t need to blow him. She just needs to touch him more when she’s fucking him.

“If you got pregnant, wouldn’t I be able to suck milk from here?” Yasha mumbles, looking up at him, the picture of innocent and adorable in the midst of raunchy talk. “I wish I could taste it.”

“I can’t get pregnant,” 329 reminds her.

“I know.” Yasha lifts her head from his chest, rubbing her head against his chin. “That’s fine, I don’t actually want that. It’s a great thought, you carrying my flesh and blood, but not if you give birth to a child I have to share you with. Even if I say ‘I want to fuck you until I knock you up,’ that’s just the sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an alpha’s reproductive instinct.”

“‘Sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an alpha’s reproductive instinct?’” 329 repeats. He laughs despite himself at this bit of academic analysis during sex.

“Really! It’s just that humanity has long since left behind the time of instinct accounting for all. But if it’s what your ‘sexual fantasy preferences brought on by an omega’s reproductive instinct’ need, you can pretend I’m your child.” Yasha gives a sly grin, lowers her head, and sucks again on the hard, damp nub on 329’s chest. “Mama?” she says around it.

329 freezes. His body contracts powerfully. His cock hardens again. Yasha sucks in a breath, looks down, and looks up at him again. He feels his face burning.

“You…don’t you think that’s weird?” 329 says, red-faced.

“My mother’s a female omega. It’s not like you’re anything like her.” Yasha giggles.

She leans in to kiss 329, then wraps her arms around his neck, resting herself against his chest. The girl is dainty and slight; if they were standing, she could hang off his neck without difficulty. The alpha’s sex organ is knotted inside 329’s body. Yasha nuzzles back and forth, looking for a comfortable position, nestled in his arms. She idly kisses his shoulder, and says, “I really love you.”

329’s heart skips a beat. He freezes, temporarily afraid to move. There’s no sequel to her words. Yasha continues to stick to him like glue, full of satisfaction, not at all like she said anything important. She yawns lazily, looking if her eyes are about to fall shut.

This is a newly presented alpha, standing at the dividing boundary of childhood and adulthood. It’s a child’s talk, that’s all, thinks 329.  _ I love sunny days. I super love tomato soup. I really love you. _ It’s nothing. Sometimes child’s talk just sounds nicer than an alpha’s bed talk. At least when a child says what’s on their mind, they’re as honest as you can get.

But it doesn’t last. They can’t help it. Human adolescence is so brief, like nighttime dew. When you see the dewdrops sparkling in the rising sun, they’re already about to evaporate. Morning dew becomes dried water stains in the end. A girl-child will become an alpha. The lovable, terrible girl in his arms will one day grow into a mature, cruel stranger.

It’s not hard to understand. But sometimes, you can’t help but grieve anyway.


	11. "You've fallen in love with me?"

The transition between spring and summer is a busy time of year. The ‘Day of Rebirth’ commemorating the founding of the Protected Area, and the birthdays of the Consul and Crown Prince, are all within two months of each other. Martial law accompanies an enormous volume of commemorative events. The bosses at least have increased orders as consolation; as for the bottom-layer workers, it’s a horrid, busy, stressful time.

“It was better a couple decades ago,” an older worker in the factory complains. “The last Consul was born in September. Things were less busy when they were spaced out.”

“Never mind a couple decades, it was better a few years ago!” returns a younger person. “The last ‘Crown Prince’ was born in—”

His friend gives him a kick. The older worker and the eavesdroppers around them quickly disperse. The last Consul was the father of the current one; he’s safe to talk about. But the last ‘Crown Prince’ was not, in fact, the current Consul. The Consul has quite a few sons and daughters, quite a few of them alphas. The last ‘Crown Prince’ had died suddenly of illness, and had been buried in a rush, accompanied by a sizable purge in the official ranks. Even today, no one dares to speak of it out loud.

It’s been more than half a year since 329 met Yasha. In the meantime, he’s lost another job, the night shift one. It was probably Yasha’s doing—not to say that she did anything, just that she  _ didn’t _ do anything. She appears most often in the evening, and while the reasons for absence she provides to his morning and afternoon jobs are flawless, she often didn’t do anything for his night job, allowing 329 to be marked absent.

“If you weren’t fast and cheap, I would’ve fired you ages ago!” his boss roars. “Even if you were knocked over the head on your way here and dragged off for a fucking, I expect you to report in! What do you think I spend money hiring you for? Do you think this is a charity!”

Anyway, 329’s fired. A few days later, he’s hired on by a furniture company. He’s recorded as a Misc. Unskilled Worker on the rolls, but his actual job is to test out various beds and fitness equipment. His salary’s about the same as it used to be on paper, but the job provides food and housing, instantly making his life a lot easier. When 329 discovers that he’s somehow the only resident in the new worker dorms (comfortable environment, just a little farther location-wise,) and that his worker card is marked as Out For Business after every absence, he’s completely certain whose beneficence is behind this job.

The transition between spring and summer is pretty busy; most people in the Protected Area spend it rushing to and fro. Yasha is no exception. She often complains that she’s so busy she can hardly breathe. She rests her head on 329’s lap, wanting him to give her a massage. 329’s never learned any massage techniques—it ends up less a rejuvenating massage than some random rubbing and hair-stroking all over Yasha’s head. Yasha closes her eyes and sighs, the picture of contentment.

Advanced technology keeps her as radiant as ever. Her exhaustion can’t be seen from her outward appearance. But 329 can tell a little from her actions and expressions. It’s probably because they’ve known each other for a while, but Yasha isn’t as dignified in front of him as she used to be. She’ll suddenly flop over in some corner of his dormitory like a boneless cat.

“So busy.” She sprawls on the sofa, lying atop 329’s thigh. “I’m exhausted. You don’t realize how tiresome some tasks are until you have to do them yourself.”

She never tells him what she’s busy doing, and 329 doesn’t ask, although he has his guesses. At fifteen, the poor are busy working, the middle-class are still in school, and the children of the powerful are probably already learning the ropes of the family business from their parents. Technology can compress learning time many times over, as long as you can afford it.

“Can I do anything for you?” asks 329.

He’s powerless to lighten Yasha’s load, but he hopes he can do something to improve her mood. Yasha plays with his fingers, laughing softly; he feels the vibrations in her chest in his leg. She says, “You’re a big help just being here!”

“Once you master these new things, you won’t be as tired,” 329 comforts her.

“Yes, once I master them,” says Yasha, half confidently and half irritably. She buries her face in her arms, like an ostrich burying its head in the sand. 329 laughs silently, combing her hair with his fingers.

Her red hair is curly and voluminous, past her shoulders but not to her waist. She considers anything longer inconvenient and anything shorter not to her taste. It isn’t braided right now, draping over Yasha’s back in a fire-red cascade. When he combs it with his fingers, his fingers drown in it, sinking into a soft, lush, fuzzy sea.

Yasha’s back gently rises and falls. After lying there for a while, her breathing slows. She’s fallen asleep, just like that. Ever since she started getting busy, she’s taken 329 out less, but stayed over for the night more often. The dorm has a big bed, so she doesn’t have to bring much with her when she comes. 329 sits for a while longer on the couch, then carefully extricates himself, picks her up, and lays her down flat on the bed. It’s not good to sleep on your stomach. Even if the difficulty of breathing doesn’t wake her up, her back will be sore the next day.

She doesn’t stir at all when he moves her, or when 329 draws the covers up over her. 329 tucks the corners in and dims the lights, doesn’t fully turn them off. Under the weak lamplight, Sleeping Beauty snores away, smacking her lips in slumber.

A curl hangs over Yasha’s forehead, flying up when she exhales, then falling back down when she inhales. Yasha’s hair is wild and untamed; only now, seeing her with her hair down, does 329 understand why she has to keep it neatly braided—that’s not to say it looks unattractive down. With her hair bound, she looks like a princess; with it down, she looks too rambunctious, as if in the next instant she might run off barefoot to roll and frolic in the grass, until her head is adorned with stray leaves.

329 tucks the curl to one side. The moment he lets go, it springs back into place. He duels for several minutes with the curl before throwing his hands up in surrender, forced to let it stay. It bobs at him in smug satisfaction. “I stay where I want!” 329 imagines it declaring, its voice and attitude identical to its owner’s.

The young alpha occupies his bed; it feels completely different from the first time they met, like a bird perched on your windowsill. His cheap rental from before didn’t have a window, but this dorm does, a very small one, completely unadorned, just a bare frame of concrete. That kind of window, if a bird lands on it, is completely transformed. 329 doesn’t know how to say it. Just,  _ there’s something there _ .

He wants to feel Yasha’s face, the way he wants to feel a sparrow on the back of its head. When Yasha’s awake, she lets him touch her hair, the top of her head, but he’s never tried to touch her face. It seems too…intimate, too ignorant of his place. Under the faint light, her face glows rosy in the way of flower petals; the fine down on her cheeks looks very soft. 329 unconsciously reaches out a hand, then takes it back. His fingers are rough and covered in thick calluses. He hesitates, then feels her with the back of her hand.

That’s when Yasha opens her eyes.

She opens her eyes, and looks at 329. 329 prays she’s not fully awake. He immediately takes back his hand, but doesn’t have a chance to take back his gaze from Yasha, or his expression. Yasha looks at him, stunned. The words burst out. “You’ve fallen in love with me?”

From that, he can tell she really isn’t fully awake, or she’d never have said that. 329 smiles stiffly. In that moment, he can’t think of any quip with which to brush it off. He doesn’t make a joke in time, and he’s lost the opportunity to immediately refute her. If there’s anything worse than that, it’s the expression on Yasha’s face.

She sits up, blinking rapidly. She’s clearly astonished, but at the same time, her face reveals hesitation. Yasha isn’t an easy person to get the measure of, but she’s open with her emotions and expressions around 329, and he’s gradually learned to read her. He still can’t guess her next move or her specific thoughts, but at the minimum, he can understand Yasha’s face.

A face perturbed by an unexpected occurrence.

329’s heart lurches and plunges straight down.

Who knew that someone so decisive and smooth-talking could reach for words in vain. Yasha’s clearly at a loss, seemingly trapped by her manners and good upbringing, not sure how to go on. “Er…” she says. Just from looking at her, 329 feels like a ruptured hot water bottle, all the heat in his body rapidly leaving him. When she next opens her mouth, 329 can’t stand it anymore. He abruptly stands up and says, “I just remembered I didn’t close the faucet.”

He flees, races into the bathroom, and turns on the faucet. Water rushes out, like a peal of thunder in the quiet of night. The dorm has much higher water pressure than his old place. 329 had forgotten in his panic. He hurriedly turns off the water, but it’s too late, she must have heard the water from outside. His lie was idiotic.

329 rubs his face, closing his eyes. It’s like Yasha’s face is engraved onto his retinas; it jumps out at him the moment he closes his eyes.

_ I really love you. Because I like you. My honor. As long as you’re here… _

If she truly meant it, would she have reacted like that upon discovering the possibility of being loved back?

Shock. Regret. At a quandary. There was delight, too, but the first three were too painful to behold, and incomprehensible to 329. How do you feel regret amid happiness? Delight amid difficulty? But if you understood ‘delight’ to be something else entirely, it all became clear.

Yasha has said that she loved him, more than once. Even though he knows he shouldn’t argue with it, sometimes 329 wants to ask, “What’s there to love?” From an outside perspective, 329 plain doesn’t think there’s anything about him worth loving—not to mention that someone with Yasha’s status could probably have whatever she wanted. He’s no longer young. He’s dead-eyed and covered in scars. If he has to come up with something, there’s maybe only the sense of accomplishment that comes with rescuing one of the unfortunate, and the sense of novelty a rich person might feel picking through trash. 329 sometimes gets the urge to ask, but he won’t, he doesn’t even really want to. Like before, a person has to have some agency.

Yasha’s expression answers this question.

Novelty. The desire for conquest. Maybe she likes precisely the fact that he doesn’t love her. He’s a challenge: the wealthy, powerful young alpha found herself a long-term goal, not expecting that her opponent would fall to her so quickly. She’s not done playing, but the level’s already cleared.

Wonderful. But what a pity. Such a dilemma. She’s pretty fond of him, after all. She never planned to wrap things up so soon.

329 turns on the faucet. The stream of water splatters against the sink,  _ hualala _ . He lets his brain go empty for a little while. Then he turns off the faucet. The water bill isn’t cheap. He should start to think about practical matters, about survival. He doesn’t have room to be sentimental. But he can’t yet control his own brain. It’s a mess in there.

He feels…naked, worse than he did the first time he orgasmed under Yasha. He feels stripped naked, slit from throat to groin with a sharp knife and completely pulled open. His organs fall out,  _ huala _ — “You’ve fallen in love with me?” —In vain, he kneels on the ground, trying to stuff heart and liver and intestine and stomach back into his body.

He fucked up.

Footsteps approach from outside. 329 looks down, turns on the faucet, and starts washing his hands. A pair of arms circle from behind. He stops, watching water flow between his fingers and rush down the drain.

“I just got a message. I have to go,” Yasha says from behind him.

She doesn’t bring up what happened. Whatever she was hesitating about, she’s made her decision.

“I’ll be really busy for a while. I might not have much time to visit.” Yasha speaks slowly, as if deliberating each word. “Please…don’t worry, everything will be better soon!”

“Okay,” says 329.

She probably won’t be back.


	12. "Yes"

329 guessed wrong about one thing. Two weeks later, he sees Yasha again. She takes his arm, all smiles, as if nothing had happened last time. But 329 wasn’t far off the mark in a different regard. It’s doubtful her reappearance has anything to do with interest in him.

Yasha openly, publicly knocks on his door and comes in. A few minutes later, she turns on some sort of device and sends it off. She turns on the radio, cranking up the music to the loudest. And she tells 329 not to go outside tonight. She gives him an apologetic smile, but doesn’t explain any of it. The second time is the same, likewise the third. She marches in openly and sneaks out silently, always in a hurry, as if going through a waypoint from one place to another. 329’s brain may have been put through surgery, but he’s not an idiot. By this point, he can tell what she’s doing.

She’s using him as cover.

Surveillance is everywhere. Its gaze falls on everyone, even someone important like Yasha. She’s probably involved in some sort of family feud or romantic entanglement, and needs a way to explain where she’s been. Hiding the important things under cover of the unimportant.

329, after losing his entertainment value, can still be recycled like trash into something useful.

Not long after, 329 loses his morning and afternoon jobs; his bosses fire him efficiently on the same day. That evening, his night job delivers an all-day work agreement to him, congrats to him. From now on, Yasha no longer needs to excuse his absences when she stops by. At last, she can abandon all pretenses.

That’s the sort of thing the all-powerful elites can do. If they want something done, they’ll get it done, 329 has no doubt. It’s unsurprising. Perfectly reasonable, even. It’s her initial generosity that surprises 329. Yes, when Yasha used various methods to excuse his absences, he was not only shocked, but also grateful. She could’ve come and gone as she wished, with no concern for whether an insignificant person would lose his job as a result. Work was harsh, but it was 329’s everything: trading work for salary, the salary that let him live outside, and not die or get sent to the Omega Welfare Center. In a world whose ways left him few choices, this was the greatest freedom he had.

And now, he’s unemployed.

According to his wristcom, 329 still has a legal job and income. At first he went to work on time, until the circumstances grew harder and harder to endure; even a shameless Exile like him started feeling as if he were sitting on pins and needles. After Yasha abandoned all pretenses, the higher-ups wouldn’t let him do any kind of work. They just stuck him in a corner, so that 329 had to endure an entire day of doing nothing, while the coworkers further away whispered to themselves, and the nearby receptionists looked on with contempt. Compared to being ignored or directly harmed, he found that he was even less able to endure this panopticon of corrosive attention. 

So 329 returns to the dorm. It’s not like this job actually has anything to do with him. If Yasha wished it, he could just not show up at all and still be fine. And if Yasha grew sick of him, no amount of effort on his part would change a thing.

The sudden abundance of free time leaves 329 at a loss. Aside from work, there doesn’t seem much he can do. From his shredded memories, there still might be one or two acquaintances still alive, but the district he’s confined to is too far from his childhood place of residence; it’s unlikely he can run into them. Many restrictions are placed on Exiles; 329 can’t even buy a newspaper. Most of the time, he remains in the dorm, exercising until he’s exhausted and his brain squeezed empty.

I don’t have anything to complain about, 329 tells himself. I have food, a place to live, enough sleep, no one’s hurting me. What’s there to complain about? Compared to his previous life, it’s a massive improvement. He should be grateful.

And yet, now and then, 329 thinks of the promotional materials for the Omega Welfare Center.  _ Providing the best food and care for lower-class omegas. The softest beds. Absolute safety. _

Rejoice. He only needs to sleep with one person.

To be honest, it’s been a long time since 329 last slept with his possessor. Yasha’s too busy to fuck an omega she’s sick of fucking. She has no time for sex, no time for sleeping, no time to eat, no time to talk…for all of those, he should add, “with him.” Maybe, elsewhere, Yasha has found a new harbor in which to set anchor, a new challenge to her liking.

Several weeks later, Yasha at last takes him out again. This time, they don’t ride the motorcycle. She takes 329’s arm and brings him on an aimless stroll. On impulse, she goes into a clothing shop: it’s the place where 329 used to work mornings. In his coworkers’ eyes, he sees surprise and judgment. _Impressive, he’s banging someone powerful!_ Only the powerful would dare hold an Exile’s hand in broad daylight. The manager hurries over to greet her. Yasha waves him aside, but his face remains all ingratiating smiles.

It’s once again a demonstration, Yasha taking over this store, ordering it cleared for her at a word, making 329 go try on clothes, demonstrating her ownership over him under the gaze of an audience. No, that makes too big a deal out of him, she’s just demonstrating…329 doesn’t know. He doesn’t understand Yasha’s world. He just needs to listen to instructions and be a good armpiece.

They bring out all the clothing that 329 had previously been forbidden to touch. Wherever Yasha casually points, someone hurriedly goes to unpack. 329 goes in and out of the changing room, showing Yasha outfit after outfit, as if performing a one-person fashion show. Pretty soon, a higher-ranking figure in the shop hierarchy shows up, bowing a couple dozen degrees deeper than even the manager, an endless torrent of praise pouring from his lips.

“We never expected such an honor to fall upon us! We had no forewarning that you would grace us with your presence; please forgive our inadequate reception!” he says with overawed reverence. “If you consider it worthy of yourself, we will immediately bring out this month’s limited edition…”

“It’s fun to take a gander sometimes,” Yasha interrupts him laughingly. “I’ve never been to a place like this where you have to try on clothing.”

Naturally, every article of clothing on her body is a product of advanced technology, tailor-made, perfectly fit. There was no need to try on any of it.

As the high-born young lady idly chats with her counterpart, her gaze remains glued to 329. Her eyes lick over 329’s face, slip down his neck, worm into his collar, until 329’s skin feels hot. He feels a twinge of helplessness; even as he wears three layers of clothing, Yasha’s gaze makes him feel naked. All the other guests are gone from the store, but the staff still remain. Their attention, or rather “their attention upon Yasha watching him”, makes 329 uncomfortable, as if a private occasion is being intruded upon by others.

The next outfit is a replica military uniform, modeled after the parade military uniforms from before the Disaster. In a roundabout way, it also looks a bit like the uniforms of the Consul’s personal guard. Yasha stands nearby, admiring him with clasped arms, her eyes alight. “It suits you. It’s gorgeous,” she praises. “What about the ceremonial sword? Shouldn’t there be a sword?”

Someone immediately answers yes. 329 returns to the changing room to get the sword. He finds it, but doesn’t know where to fasten it.

The sword is purely decorative, and decorative means complicated knots and clasps. 329 bends down and fumbles around for a long time without success. When he hears the changing room door opening, he assumes Yasha has gotten impatient and asked someone to come in to help him.

A pair of arms wraps around 329’s waist. Startled, he lets go of the sword; by the time it hits the ground, 329 has recognized those hands. Yasha’s arms circle his waist, her chin rests against his back, her hands slide downward.

“May I?” she says, palming between 329’s legs.

Her hand presses at 329’s crotch, yet her words are as earnest as someone asking for a dance at a ball. Her embrace makes 329’s heart thump wildly. Blood first rushes into his head, then diffuses across his face. Underneath that slender hand, 329 is starting to grow hard.  _ May I _ ? Yes, yes, other than nod, what can he do?

The alpha unfastens his belt, the knots and clasps coming apart effortlessly under her hands. She doesn’t take off his clothes, just pushes them aside, the trousers sliding down until they catch on his military boots. In this tight space, they couple standing up, leaning against the thin wall. She turns his face to kiss him, at first decorously, then in a moment ravenously, as if she wants to suck off his tongue.

Breath and pulse thunders in 329’s ears. When Yasha enters him, his legs are shaking. The alpha grabs his pelvis, thrusting rapidly, slamming into 329 until he can’t keep his grip on the wall. Bit by bit, he slides down. In this position, all he can see are the snow-white wall and the wooden floorboards, all he can feel are the hands on his hips and the cock in his ass. To tell the truth, all alpha cocks feel basically the same. A vague unease rises within 329. He tries to turn his head, but keeps getting interrupted by the thrusting. His breathing quickens. He frees a hand and tentatively gropes behind him.

He touches Yasha’s waist. The girl starts to giggle, as if it tickles. The panic recedes with the laughter. The tinnitus in his ears grows distant. Yasha pulls out, then flips 329 over.

The door to the changing room is already shut. There’s only them in here, and the alpha’s gaze has grown hotter, more unabashed. They’re very close, their nosetips almost touching. The pupils have swelled in those green eyes, round as a cat’s at midnight, reflecting 329’s face. Her eyes are always like that when they make love, that astonishing admiration written in every striation, as intent as if she’s handling a precious treasure, as fervent as if she’s paying reverence to the image of a god. 329 thinks, who wouldn’t lose their head under such a gaze?

Yasha yanks down the trousers caught on 329’s boots, hauling one leg onto her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I can take your weight,” she laughs, panting. She closes in, nipping at 329’s chin. 329 can’t help but caress her back. Her body is smooth and exquisite; he wants to touch it, and he wants to withdraw his hand, so that he doesn’t scrape her tender skin with his calluses. He pulls back his hand, but Yasha grabs him, pressing his palm against her chest. Her breast is soft and pert, not enough to fill his hand; her heart beats rapidly under the soft mound. 329 cups it, as if cupping a high-spirited dove. 

Everything happens fast, passionate and in a hurry. 329 thought he’d come quickly, but he hasn’t by the time Yasha pulls out. This narrow space sits inside a big store. The staff wait outside, their eyes on the door, their ears perked. 329 used to work here. He knows how many people are in here, even knows some of their names. They’re listening. They’re watching. They know what happened.

“I’m sorry, I did it outside again,” says Yasha.

The alpha straightens her clothes and whispers her apology softly into his ear, kisses his lips. For that, 329 is willing to let her fuck him here a second time. Yasha’s expression is one of sincere guilt, her kiss soft and light, turning 329’s heart soft and light too. “It’s fine,” he says, bending to straighten himself up. His knees are still weak. It feels like walking on clouds.

And then Yasha opens the door, and waves the staff over to wrap up everything 329 tried on. “A gift for you. You look amazing in them.” Smiling, she turns to look at him. “And the suit from earlier—please, you must wear it tonight and show me.”

329’s feet are back on the ground.

The door’s open. His clothes are still a mess; he and the room are still covered in the smell of sex. Some of the staff look down; others look at him. He doesn’t know whether the contempt in their gazes is worse, or the envy. 329 sees the coworker who’d helped him out once. He’s watching 329, his gaze ugly, as if enduring something revolting. Behind them, a store placard gleams under the lighting.  _ Try on site, buy after you try _ .

329 licks his lips. His lip has toothprints on it.

Yasha makes a show of escorting him back, but doesn’t have him put on the suit after they go inside. “Send me pictures!” she says, her happy face disappearing inside the teleporter’s ring of light.

Belatedly, 329 feels weary.

He doesn’t exercise today; once he showers, he climbs into bed. He feels exhausted, but he can’t fall asleep, probably because he hasn’t actually physically exerted himself much. 329 doesn’t want to get out of bed, and he doesn’t want to stare blankly at the ceiling. He reaches a hand into his pants, touching himself, thinking of a supple body and a milk-scented kiss. It’s much easier to drift off once he comes.

A few hours later, 329 is shaken awake by a pair of hands. He opens his eyes, and sees Yasha perched at the head of the bed, looking as if she wants to say something. Right. He forgot to send pictures, 329 thinks muzzily.

“Do you still love me?” says Yasha.

329 wakes up.

He tries to determine the alpha’s expression. He wants to know what answer she’s looking for. Unfortunately, Yasha hasn’t turned on the light. Her face is unreadable in the dimness of night.

“Don’t think about what I want to hear.” Yasha covers his mouth, her voice pitched like she’s playing cute, almost like she’s pleading. “Please tell me the truth. Whatever you answer, I’ll take care of you.”

She’s terrifying, 329 thinks. No one understands him like she does.

Then again, besides this wondrous alpha, who would want to understand him? Turning his gaze inward, 329 isn’t too sure of the answer to her question, to tell the truth. Is it gratitude? Is it desire for survival and a comfortable environment? He’s restricted to such a small area, his life and memories surgically castrated. Under these circumstances, would he have “fallen in love” with anyone willing to reach out a helping hand? 329 doesn’t know. But to a beggar, a dollar is all the wealth he has, and for it to be taken away is to lose all he has—there’s not much love in a tattered soul like his, and he’s well and truly given away everything that he can give.

“Yes.” 329 lets the word fall into Yasha’s palm. She lets go. He says it again. “Yes.”

He closes his eyes after he says it, not wanting to see her expression. But Yasha comes over and kisses him. He tastes the curve of her lips.

“That’s great,” says Yasha. “That’s wonderful!”

She sounds so happy. 329 opens his eyes, and sees her smiling face inches away. She looks overjoyed. Even in the dark of night, her beautiful, smiling face lights up the room. Some kind of…some kind of impossible hope makes a muck of 329’s heart, to the point where he feels physical pain. Something’s crashing around in his head, like the steam in a kettle, determined to escape one way or another.

He says without thinking, “Don’t give me clothes.”

Yasha is taken aback, but quickly smiles and nods. “If you don’t like them, throw them away. They’re already yours. Do with them as you’d like,” she says, unruffled. “Good night!”

With that, she kisses 329, stands, and leaves once more.


	13. The Desire to Live

Two days after Yasha leaves, the populace ushers in the “Crown Prince’s” birthday. Lasting for an entire day, the enormous celebration also marks the end of the busiest time of year in the Protected Area. 

But unlike the previous years, martial law doesn’t end with the arrival of summer. Rumor has it that the Lord Consul has run into some difficulties, that the previously suppressed rebels are undergoing a revival—but most people pay no mind. The rebels were whipped years ago. A resurgence is less likely than even trouble with the gangs.

Either way, it has nothing to do with 329.

All that occupies him is Yasha, always Yasha. 329 uses the new wristcom Yasha gave him to take photos of himself wearing those clothes. Not long after, Yasha’s response appears on the wristcom: also pictures, cartoon people with hearts for eyes, and photos of herself with lips pursed blowing kisses. She’ll say treacly but empty sweet nothings, and announces, frequently, how busy she is. The third week after she leaves, 329 starts to suspect that he was only dreaming that night, that he’d dreamed her asking him if he loved her.

329 brings up that night carefully. After long hesitation and repeated consideration, he asks Yasha if he can do with those clothes as he likes. “Of course!” says Yasha’s reply. “Like I said, they’re yours.”

She doesn’t say anything else. She still doesn’t return.

The sixth week, 329 decides to get rid of the excess clothing. Most of the outfits are too elaborate for normal wear. Rather than let them take up space in the dorm, he’d rather exchange them for credits. He knows of a black market nearby; the merchants there don’t care where the goods come from, or who comes to trade for them, as long as they make enough profit.

Credits from this kind of transaction are, of course, illegal, and can’t be used to repay an Exile’s debt, but they can be used on other things, like food, rent, medicine…right now, 329 doesn’t have any expenses, which means he can save the money. If you don’t squirrel away food during the abundance of autumn, you’ll starve to death in the winter. No matter how long the “autumn” might last, it’s always good to prepare.

It takes an afternoon to pack everything and prepare. At midnight, 329 leaves the dorm, taking the clothes with him into the twisting alleyways. He keeps the expensive garments in a rough, crude burlap sack, and walks for the places with fewest people. His first transaction is eminently successful; the merchant agrees to buy the clothes at a hundredth of the original price, and announces that he’ll give him an extra twenty percent if 329 sells all the remainder to him.

The black market doesn’t stay open for long; there’s not enough time to make the trip twice in one night. The second transaction takes place the next day. It goes smoothly as well, although 329 gets the vague sense that he’s being watched. He doesn’t actually see anyone, but out of caution, he decides not to continue to do business another day in a row. 329 spends a solid three days inside the dorm, and only ventures out again on the fourth.

The transaction goes without a hitch. He doesn’t see anyone on the way there. As he heads back at three in the morning, he finds his path blocked off.

It’s the narrowest point on the route. Really, it’s nothing more than the small gap between two abandoned buildings. 329 chose it because it’s so narrow that there’s no room to place surveillance. And precisely because it’s so narrow, a few wooden crates are enough to barricade his way, no room to go around them. 329 last passed through a few hours ago; if anything had been here then, he couldn’t have missed it. Who would move all this heavy stuff into the path?

329 shivers.

He pushes at the crates. They don’t budge. He immediately turns, takes a few steps—then freezes. The Protected Zone’s artificial moonlight shines down on the unlit alleyway, revealing a black silhouette at the mouth of the alley—like the crates, squarely blocking 329’s way.

“Hello?” 329 forces himself to sound calm.

His voice echoes in the empty alleyway. This place is remote enough that even a scream might not be enough to summon anyone.

The silhouette doesn’t answer; nor does it turn away. Whoever it is takes a step forward, allowing 329 to see the gun in his hand.

329 puts his hands up, indicating that he won’t resist. He waits for the man to slowly approach, expecting it all to be a misunderstanding, expecting the collar on his neck to dissuade the man from any unwise decisions. Exiles are property of the government. You can harm them, but you can’t kill them—anyone who does also becomes Exiled.

The silhouette walks closer. 329’s heart begins to sink.

The man clearly knows 329 is an Exile. In fact, he knows 329. His name is Johan. He’s a beta, 329’s coworker. A few months ago, Johan had yelled at a guest who’d tried to harass 329, then met 329’s thanks with disdain; a few weeks ago, Johan had watched Yasha bring 329 into the store, into the changing room, with the expression of someone regarding a maggot.

Even that time, a few weeks ago, Johan hadn’t looked as terrible as he does now.

They’re close enough now that they can see each other’s faces. Johan looks deeply haggard, like a completely different person than the staff member in the store a few weeks ago. His hair sticks up wildly; his eyes are bruised and bloodshot, as if he hasn’t slept. At the minimum, he hasn’t shaved his stubble in days. His hands shake. When he speaks, 329 catches a whiff of alcohol.

“You’re a whore,” he says, his voice trembling.

It’s not a new insult, even if Johan has never said it before. 329 doesn’t know if he should respond, so he remains silent.

“I saw…I saw. She fucked you in the changing room, you even kissed her! You let her do that to you! You bent over for the elites just for those pretty clothes, god! Just for some food, for a place to live, you caved?” Johan said feverishly. “You don’t even care, do you? You’ll fuck anyone, as long as they give you things, you won’t even resist!”

He brings up Yasha keeping him. He brings up several assaults by strangers. 329 is surprised he knows about all this. His silence doesn’t satisfy Johan, who presses the gun against 329’s chest, demanding an answer.

What can 329 say?

“Permit” others to treat him like that? He’s never had the privilege of “permitting.” Yasha comes and goes according to her whims; her boons are bestowed and withdrawn without rhyme or rhythm. 329 can’t request anything, and can’t refuse anything. Any citizen can freely torment an Exile; resistance only brings trouble. “There’s no use resisting,” 329 tries to explain. But Johan flies into a rage.

“That’s all? Doing whatever’s easiest, giving in to hardship!” He waves his arms wildly, his voice full of an astonishing despair. “Why don’t you fight them? You caved! Why couldn’t you hold out? Why?”

“Because I can’t,” 329 says softly.

“Of course you can! How could you not? You’re, you—”

This gunman begins sobbing. This grown man covers his face and starts to bawl. His bizarre reaction puzzles 329, and sends a wave of prickling fear through him. He carefully takes a step to the side. Johan lifts his head violently, thrusting the gun barrel against 329’s throat.

“You have no self-respect! A prisoner, a slave, a whore!” Johan bellows hysterically. “How can you live like that? I can’t take it anymore! If I were you I would have killed myself long ago!”

How strange. It’s 329 who’s lived through all this, yet a bystander says he can’t take it. Yes, his life truly is awful. He’s an Exile. He can’t have children or be marked. He’s lost half his life’s worth of memories. He struggles for life on the poverty line. And he’s fallen into the hands of an inscrutable member of the elite…If asked point blank, even 329 wouldn’t be able to tell you why he’s so determined to live. All he can say is that humanity’s ability to adapt is quite powerful. Even if you have to live in mud, you’ll find a way to live in mud.

Death is a release; it takes more courage to live. But only if he lives can he see the light of the artificial sun. Only if he lives can he see and hear birds flitting by the window. Only if he lives can he caress soft waves of red hair. For these small, unimportant things, he clings to the bramble vines on the cliffside. Even if he bleeds, he won’t let go.

Johan isn’t 329. 329 wants to live.

Johan sniffs hard, wipes at his face, then lifts his head once more. This time, he no longer looks despairing, no longer looks enraged, but somehow it strikes even deeper fear into 329’s heart. The muscles of Johan’s face spasm a few times, forcing out an ugly smile.

“I’ll give you release,” he says.

The gun sounds. At the same time, 329 drops to a crouch. The bullet grazes his hair and buries itself into a wooden crate. He awkwardly rolls on the ground, avoiding a second shot. Johan pounds out bullets without restraint, the gunshots deafening in his ears. 329’s palms and back are covered in sweat. The desire to live has him ducking and dodging in the narrow alley, trying to charge past Johan and escape. Flying splinters of wood split his skin. A bullet hits his leg. He falls to the ground.

329 stares at the gun muzzle in terror. He tries to crawl. He can’t move.

“Shh, don’t be afraid,” Johan murmurs. A martyr’s radiance flashes across his face. “I’ll uphold your good name unto death. We love you, we…”

“No!” 329 shakes his head violently. “I don’t want to die!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” Johan’s suddenly shouting. “You’re not that kind of man! They ruined you! You were once my idol, you once led the people of the entire lower city in revolt, your name should have been unimpeachable! Look at you now! No. That’s not right. You aren’t him. The Commander’s dead. How dare you wear his face—”

_ Bang! _

First comes a hole, just the size of a fingernail, appearing on Johan’s forehead. Only then comes the  _ bang _ . His corpse topples backwards, onto the ground, blood and brains spilling out. A line of light splits the air; the red-haired girl descends from the sky. Without taking time to gain her footing, she throws herself into 329’s arms.

329’s heart is still hammering. Everything happened too quickly. The relief of dodging death mingles with the terror of having been on the brink, leaving him shaking all over. How absurd: the people who hate him and view him in contempt haven’t done anything, but a person who claimed to love him wanted to murder him. How strange: the alpha who’d killed a man, who’d saved him in the nick of time, who’d displayed her might, is sobbing in his arms, trembling, even panicked and lost than he is.

After six weeks, 329 sees Yasha once again. Her arms wrap around him like a vice, as if trying to press herself into his chest cavity. Her teeth are chattering, her delicate frame shivering without stop. When she lifts her head, 329 sees a terrified face. The normally self-assured young aristocrat is bloodlessly pale, her eyes red from crying.

She looks like she’s in more need of comfort, even protection; this is enough to makes 329 calm down. Unconsciously, he strokes her back. The motion seems to jolt her back to herself. Yasha cups 329’s face, eyes sweeping up and down wildly, searching for any possible injuries. She discovers the bloodstain on 329’s legs; the red makes her cringe, as if burned.

“A petty criminal, how laughable…I nearly lost you, it’s all my fault, I’m a fool, an idiot, an imbecile, so close, the same mistake.” Yasha babbles to herself, her words fast and frantic, like a startled woodland creature. “I need to watch over you every moment of the day. No, I can’t leave you outside. Believe me, everything’s fine now, don’t worry. I won’t lose you a second time. No one will hurt you ever again. No one, no one ever, will take you from my hands.”

Her grip is too tight, almost painful. Not waiting for 329 to respond, Yasha takes something out and aims it at him.

White light flashes across his vision. 329 loses consciousness.


	14. Commander Eden is Dead

329 sees a starry sky.

For a moment, not remembering what had happened, he thinks he’s outdoors. Very quickly, he realizes his mistake. The stars abovehead twinkle in a deep blue night sky, like the sky view from the past eras seen in documentaries. The man-made night sky of the Protected Area is dull and unchanging, far less captivating than this dazzling stretch of…ceiling.

Without thinking, 329 feels the bedsheets. Like the covers, they’re as soft as clouds. He remembers what had happened before he lost consciousness, the flash of light, Yasha, the madman. He cringes. He props up his upper body, surveying the unfamiliar room.

“Good day, sir. Would you like a drink of water?”

The young man’s voice seems to come from every direction; 329 doesn’t see a speaker. His voice is very even, strangely familiar and unfamiliar at once. Instinctively, 329 shivers, looking around wildly. The room gradually brightens with gentle lamplight, illuminating a comfortable and spacious room. There’s a lot of stuff here that 329 doesn’t recognize, but certainly not enough to hide a person.

“Who are you?” 329 asks the empty room. “Where are you?”

“I’m Lady Yasha’s virtual butler,” the voice replies inflectionlessly. “If you wish, I can appear in my simulated physical form.”

The sense of wrongness grows more intense, sticking in 329’s craw, even as he has no idea of what’s bothering him in the first place. He takes the glass of water that appears on the bedside table and takes a few sips. “I didn’t know virtual butlers actually existed,” he mutters to himself.

“Ever since the AI rebellion that caused the Disaster, all assistive systems are created without hyperintelligence and reformatted periodically. Please rest easy.” The virtual butler says, “E-029 is at your service.”

E-029, 329, they sound like they’re from the same assembly line. This bit of light self-mockery doesn’t land quite as easily as it usually does. It prods at 329’s spine. Unease spreads through him.

“Come out!” 329 yells. “Let me see you!”

The virtual butler accedes to his request.

A projection solidifies inside the room, life-sized, feet on the ground. It has blue eyes, golden hair, a handsome face, an aviation jacket with a fur collar. Its clothes, practical but insufficiently aesthetic, don’t meet the regulations of the Protected Area Air Force, but its face wears a perfect service industry smile, like a best-selling model in a crystal display case.

329 jumps up.

He doesn’t realize he’s leapt from the bed until after the fact. And when he stands, he finds that he’s slightly shorter than E-029. 329 pauses, then slowly straightens his habitually stooped spine. Now they’re the same height.

If you’ve listened to your voice on a recording, you’ll find that your voice doesn’t sound like it usually does.

It sounds familiar and unfamiliar at once.

The virtual butler stands before 329, equipped with his voice and his face—if it were a perfect imitation, 329 could consider this some prankish guest-receiving custom. But he’s well aware that his own voice is raspier, his hair greyer, his face no longer youthful. A time-distorting mirror seems to lie between them. The two faces are so similar, aside from the years that separates them.

“Who are you?” 329 asks shakily.

“I’m Lady Yasha’s virtual butler, E-029, at your service,” answers the virtual butler.

“Your…your original,” 329 swallows with difficulty. “What are you modeled on?”

“Recording No. 207, from seven years and six months ago,” the butler answers flawlessly.

He doesn’t remember anything from seven years ago. The surgery cut out over a decade from his head. That thing looks at him, as if waiting for further questions. 329’s not sure if he actually wants to ask and hear the answer. He drops to sit on the bed once more, then abruptly stands back up, sets down the glass he’d accidentally spilled, and strides toward the door.

The door silently opens for him.

Outside the bedroom is a corridor, leading toward an even larger living room, and past that is another long hallway with doors on either side. It looks like an old fairytale: a huge house, countless doors, a fearful bride of Bluebeard. Which door will stain his key with blood? 329 turns. The virtual butler follows behind him, taking lifelike strides with nonexistent feet.

“You can open any of the doors,” it says. “Lady Yasha hopes you can feel at home here.”

Truly, in the next couple hours, 329 opens every single door—every room is open to him—but there isn’t a way out.

Some rooms look ordinary, too ordinary, as if a commoner’s simple room had been stuffed into this luxurious mansion. Some rooms look like a museum gallery, high-tech display cases filled with perplexing exhibits. Who knew that scraps of cloth, buttons, cigarette butts, and bullet casings had any display value. Most of the rooms make 329 feel a terrifying intimacy. Others are plastered with notices, photos, and newspaper clippings, all featuring the same man.

_ Pilot. Wanted Criminal. Savior. Subversive Element. Commander. Head Honcho of the Rebel Army. Light of Hope. ‘Saint Omega’ of the Lower Classes. Guiding Star. Demon Whore. Deceiving Figurehead…Eden Mitchell. _

That’s 329’s name.

No one is born with a number for a name. His name is Eden. It means ‘light and happiness’, his father had told him, ‘the Garden of Eden from the Old Testament.’

He suddenly laughs, laughs until he can’t breathe. He doesn’t know if he’s laughing at his own name or the man in the newspaper clippings, a man who no longer exists. Who is that? Who is that? A complete and utter stranger, the subject of obsession and infatuation of the owner of this mansion, the man who’d rented 329’s body in the years he’s lost—no,  _ he’s _ the owner of this house,  _ he’s  _ the soul that owns this name, this identity, this body.

Eden is laughing, shaking, crying. His head hurts. Spots of light and darkness dance on his retinas. Warm blood drips from his nose onto the floorboards. It’s always like this when he tries to recall things. The surgery doesn’t “hide” memories. It incinerates what shouldn’t exist and scatters the ashes, leaving only a black hole with pain inside and nothing else. 329 looks at these faraway stories and remembers not a single scrap.

He spends a long time in the room with the computer.

The computer is filled with countless clips, projecting them onto the big screen. In the dusty gray true sky outside of the Protectorate, the pilot Eden laughs out loud and flips a middle finger at the camera in the surveillance moon, before the shot is swallowed in a glorious explosion. Commander Eden, decorated with medals, makes a rousing speech in front of the camera, his blue eyes shining, and it’s as if light and everyone’s gazes are all sucked toward him.

Light and shadow flicker across the faces of his audience. There are three similar countenances in this room, but on closer look, none of them are at all the same. The virtual butler maintains an impeccable smile, deferent, mannerly, perfectly designed down to the angle of the corners of his mouth. 329 has grey hairs and wrinkles; exhaustion weighs down his slightly bent spine. He hears his voice cry out in the name of human rights and love. The words burst forth from a heart full of vitality, laden with passion and fire. They fall into his ears without raising a single splash.

329 feels nothing.

He doesn’t feel happy, roused, hopeful, or angry. The surgery used to reform criminals is a complete success. His cooled blood can no longer resonate with light and heat. 329 feels a wave of grief, not really like self-pity, more like “sympathy.”

He sympathizes with that man. See, even a figure of legend like him wasn’t spared in the end.

Commander Eden is well and truly dead.


	15. Bringing Down the Eagle

“What about me?” 329 whispers. “Which room do I belong in?”

“You can go into any room you’d like,” answers E-029.

The AI is advanced enough to wear a nearly sincere expression to comfort a prisoner, but its mechanical brain isn’t human enough to understand the self-mockery in 329’s words. This room is used for archiving records. That room is used for storing artifacts. These relics are stored so methodically; where, then, should the Commander’s remains go? He has no way of getting an answer from the virtual butler, never mind empathy: it might look more like the “Commander” than he does, but it doesn’t even qualify as a ghost of the past. It’s only a knockoff.

“Does she fuck you?” 329 asks suddenly.

“No, my physical setup is unsuited to sexual activity.” E-029 thoughtfully adds, “If you’re referring to ‘my simulated form,’ then yes, Lady Yasha has indeed repeatedly engaged in sexual data troubleshooting with this form in a sim environment.”

_ My simulated form _ ? Spoken as if that face belongs to the AI itself, and not the man who’d died before his time. His wording inflames 329’s heart like a splash of industrial acid. But in comparison, another part of that sentence calls even more attention.

“Data?” 329 repeats.

“Your data.”

It takes 329 a few moments to realize what this means.

A simulator can model almost anything. Yasha has abundant practice at learning within a realistic sim environment. This sort of luxury is easily obtainable to the powerful, whether the practice sim is of the sky and aviation, or the bed and the aviator. A sim environment can provide enough practice in a few months to turn a fifteen-year-old virgin into an old hand.

There were never other lovers.

There was never anyone else, 329 realizes. With that kind of ‘targeted practice’, Yasha doesn’t need to be a Casanova to master him effortlessly. In the days where she didn’t visit, she’d never truly left him.

What does she want, anyway? Is she trying to achieve a full score off his body? 329 is so stunned he’s laughing. He suspects he’s going as crazy as this room. Shock, alarm, confusion, and a dozen other emotions clash together and end up as strained laughter. He’s almost tickled by this farce. Compared to everything he’s seen in his room, the alpha’s deep dive into sexual intercourse isn’t actually that horrifying. But this kid really, truly needs to see a shrink.

“Do they even know each other?” says 329. “My data isn’t yours, or Eden’s…”

“You are Eden Mitchell himself,” the virtual butler reminds him.

“Not the Commander’s,” 329 repeats, emphasizing his meaning. “You aren’t talking about Commander Eden from however many years ago, because you don’t have his data, right? She never fucked Commander Eden…god, had she even presented then? Have they ever even met?”

“That depends on your definition of meeting,” says the butler.

“Don’t play word games with me! I mean in person, face to face!” says 329.

“No.”

329 laughs aloud.

“But they were once four thousand meters apart,” the butler disputes.

To explain this point, it plays a recording for 329.

Four thousand meters in the air, the sky over the Protected Area is a haze of smoke and gunfire. The Steel Battalion covers the sky and blots out the sun in its net; strangely-shaped antiquated planes weave between them, like flying needles, like fearless fireflies. Four thousand meters below, cutting-edge technology conceals the Consul’s residence. He paces back and forth, his face thunderous. Assassins and common rabble haven’t gotten this close in over half a century; their shadows darken the head of the supreme power in the land, the greatest of transgressions. Who could have thought that the rebel army’s antiquated flyers would hold their own against the Protected Area’s iron fleet.

Four thousand meters above, the legend of the rebel army pilots his Eagle No. 27. Its cry shakes the clouds, and the head of the statue of the Consul falls with it. The mob cheers raggedly; soon, the waves of sound merge into one, clearly audible.

“Mitchell! Mitchell! Mitchell!”

The sound transmits four thousand meters below through the surveillance devices, as if their shouts are resounding through the Protected Area, piercing the countless layers of defense around the command center unabated. The sound makes the generals go pale, makes the Consul go livid. He curses the army for its uselessness, his gaze fixed on the plane cutting across the screen like a swimming fish as lasers and bullets weave a net around it. The chassis is covered in crisscrossing grazes, none of them fatal; they seem more like the medals of the ever-victorious general.

And then, as if in response to the Consul’s command, a missile strikes the Eagle.

Black smoke pours from Eagle No. 27. The undefeated legend plunges from the sky. The Consul’s face shows pleasure—then fury: the pilot ejects from the disintegrating chassis, his escape pod launched toward the slums. The mobs have destroyed the surveillance system there; if Mitchell makes it, it’s akin to letting a tiger back into his mountain.

“Who?” The Consul roars. “Who swapped out the pulse missile?”

His elite corps have turned out in force, all of them equipped with highly destructive pulse missiles that never leave survivors, let alone opportunities to escape. The Protected Area’s higher ranks have long since given up on capturing the leader of the rebel army alive; they now only seek to eliminate this thorn in their side. What pilot would dare swap out the deadly ammunition of their own initiative?

“I did!”

Incredibly, someone confesses.

One of the control pods in the command center swings open. A petite girl jumps out. She takes her helmet, revealing a head of red hair identical to the Consul’s. The recording can’t be from more than a few years ago; Yasha looks almost the same as she does now, only even more pampered and childlike. “I got him! Papa!” she whoops as if she has the whole place to herself. “I swapped in a tracking missile! The tracker’s still on him!”

Everyone outside the control pod is staring, stunned beyond words. It’s not that no one’s thought of tracking missiles; it’s just that using one requires very high accuracy and skill, running a huge risk of letting a major criminal get away. But no one dares to let their embarrassment turn to anger. No one who can make it high enough up the ranks to be here is an idiot; even if she snuck into the command center, joined this operation against all regulation, and swapped out the missile, who would dare say a word against the Consul’s precious youngest daughter?

The Consul’s expression relents slightly, partly because it’s his daughter, but more so because of her words. He asks urgently, “What’s the tracking number?”

“I set it myself. No one can guess it if I don’t tell,” the girl says proudly.

“Don’t fool around, this is serious!” The Consul sighs.

His voice isn’t at all harsh, more like he’s trying to persuade a small child to give up her candy. Similarly, his daughter doesn’t seem to consider herself as being ordered around by the commander-in-chief. Her grin remains bright, her gaze playful. She walks over and grabs the Consul’s arm. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t give it over!” she says. “But you’ve got to promise me something. When they track him down with the number, you have to give him to me, okay?”

“What?” The Consul is taken aback.

“I don’t care about anyone else, but you have to give Eden to me, directly to me,” she says, tugging at her father’s arm and playing cute. “I shoot it down, it’s mine, you said so!”

A wrinkle of the Consul’s brow can leave a grizzled general shaking, but sadly, it has no effect on his daughter, who continues to look at him, grinning. After a few seconds, the Consul gives an impatient nod. “Very well,” he says.

Yasha smiles, showing teeth.

The recording ends here, the smile congealing on her face. The smile of a beautiful girl should be entrancing, but this one chills 329 to the bone—the smile is so wide that it almost distorts that exquisite face. Her green eyes glitter, looking directly into the camera, as if gazing out at the audience on the other side of the screen. So much joy…no, it’s ecstacy, it’s a good girl anticipating her Christmas present, it’s a fanatical believer receiving a miracle, it’s an addict salivating for her drug, it’s a predator gazing at the bloody meat about to fall into its jaws, the tip of its tongue grazing over bone-white teeth. It’s not unfamiliar, 329 realizes. It never really went away. It’s lurked behind Yasha’s eyes this entire time, dormant in every gaze she’s turned toward him.

He’s always been uneasy over Yasha’s causeless desire. He’d never thought that what she revealed was only the tip of an iceberg, already disguised and hidden through caution and reserve. Her hunger had once been so naked and razor-edged, unfettered and uninhibited, utterly fearless. She reveals it now only in glimpses during the throes of passion.

329 touches his abdomen without thinking.

The scar under his hand is the most serious on his entire body. Memories of Yasha laying kiss after kiss on it flash across his mind. So that’s why. So that’s why. It’s not only lust that motivates her. She brought down the eagle. She defeated the legend, for the last and only time. She’s his protector, and she was once his executioner. She robbed him the ability to become another’s mate or mother, then forced on him the role of lover. She kisses her masterpiece, an equal measure of tenderness and pride in her lips and tongue.

So, they were all wrong, 329 thinks. The people bitterly mourning his loss of reproductive ability were wrong. But he was also wrong, to think that his injury wouldn’t kill or cripple him. That tracking missile took Commander Eden’s life, in the end. No one could have guessed that the shard of shrapnel that remained in his body would light the way for the enemy, turning the hero into an unwitting traitor.

The commoners living in the Protected Area were too far removed from the elites. They’d never even heard of tracking missiles. When the Steel Battalion slaughtered their way into the Revolutionary Army’s main camp, everyone in it, caught unawares, perished.

This, 329 doesn’t know about. His capture and the slaughter occurred outside of surveillance range. In the past, surveillance was still insufficiently widespread; certain precious moments went unrecorded, beyond the ability of even the daughter of the Consul to collect.

The slaughter in which Eden was captured, for one. The first time Yasha saw Eden, for another.

This ‘seeing’, of course, was not in person or face to face.

At that time, the rebel army had yet to reach its heights. Their guiding star was only beginning to make a name for himself. At that time, all of Yasha’s older siblings were still alive, and she was only an ignorant little girl, sneaking into the meeting room where her father was. The atmosphere in the room was as solemn as ever, the old folks long-faced, her father, sister, and brothers frowning, everyone as dull as stone statues. Yasha pouted, looked up, and saw the man on the screen yank off his helmet, open his mouth, and tear the stagnant air asunder.

“Is this a live broadcast? Fantastic!” Hanging on to the rope ladder dangling from a civilian flyer, he shouted into the camera, “The sky should not be chained! Citizens should not be collared! Knowledge and culture belong to all of humanity! They have no right to stop us! We deserve the truth! Friends, rise up—”

“Cut the signal!” the Consul ordered.

The screen immediately went black. The room fell deafeningly silent. The somber air returned. Next, they began to discuss  _ that new troublemaker Eden Mitchell _ ,  _ that accursed omega _ .

But in the little girl’s head, the scene hadn’t faded, that clarion voice hadn’t fallen silent. Under a hail of bullets, that man was covered in blood and filth. He truly couldn’t be called presentable-looking. He was completely lower-class. But the wind had whipped up his short golden hair. Even in the blurry shot, his blue eyes shone under his goggles. His eyes flashed with an arresting radiance. His voice blazed with an overawing flame. In that moment, Yasha didn’t know what to do. The rambunctious little girl could only stand there, feeling…feeling strange.

She’d never seen anyone like him.

It was as if a permanently drawn curtain had been yanked aside, and arresting sunlight was shining in, making you cover your eyes even as you couldn’t resist peeking between your fingers. It was as if a hole had been blasted into a windowless tower, and a wild wind roared through the shattered stone wall, forcing you to cover your face even as you longed to breathe deep. Yasha’s mouth was dry, her skin covered in goosebumps, her heard pounding. She wanted to say something, but no words would come out. 

She didn’t know what she saw in him; if you’d never seen colors in your life, only to come across a rainbow one day, you wouldn’t know how to put your honest admiration into words. But it was a wonderful feeling. This person was wonderful. Like the sun before the Disaster, like the sky inside a simulator. It dizzied Yasha. It made her want to fly.

Her father finally discovered her. The Consul felt puzzlement at his youngest daughter’s daze, followed by concern; he thought that she’d been frightened by the ruffian earlier. Yasha shook her head vigorously. Adults were so dumb. How could they think she was frightened? “He’s not scary at all!” she blurted out. “He’s, he’s…”

Yasha couldn’t find the right word. She thought forever, but couldn’t squeeze out even a slightly adequate descriptor. Right, he was an omega.

“He’s really good-looking?” she said uncertainly, using the words her older siblings used to praise omegas.

The adults laughed. Yasha snuck a glance at their faces and found confirmation in them. She nodded more confidently. “He’s beautiful,” she said.

“Yeah,” snickered the youngest of her older brothers. “He sure is pretty.”

The still frame suddenly shifts. The Yasha of the past disappears, replaced by the logo of the Protected Area’s official news channel. The virtual butler says, “Urgent news.”

The news is, the Consul’s successor has met with an unfortunate accident.

The Crown Prince’s photo appears on one corner of the screen, red hair, green eyes. Shortly after, the Consul appears onscreen, still sitting in his chair, his expression more dire than before, almost hateful. Dully, he introduces the new Crown Prince to the public—or rather, the Crown Princess. The red-haired, green-eyed female alpha stands behind her father’s chair, her hand on his shoulder, her smile sweeter than ever.


	16. From Princess to Queen

“I did it.”

329’s eyes fly open.

He’s slept poorly. Even on the most comfortable bed, the mess in his head doesn’t let him rest in peace. Sometimes he dreamed blurry dreams of gun smoke and flight. They weren’t memories, just replays of the recordings he watched earlier that day.

But this, this face as radiant as a spring day even in the dimness of the bedroom, this hand caressing 329’s cheek, is clearly neither recollection nor dream.

It’s Yasha.

She straddles 329, bending down to rest her forehead against his. They’re so close that 329 can smell green grass and milk. The familiar scent makes his eyes burn with tears. Only now, in this moment, does he realize he misses his alpha. It’s been so long since the last time they’ve been intimate, and so much has happened in the meantime that it feels like a different life. Only when Yasha’s lips trail from his chin to his lips, giving him a chaste kiss, does 329 feel exhaustion. He doesn’t want to talk.

He just opens his mouth.

As if receiving invitation, Yasha cups his face and licks into his mouth. Her soft, nimble tongue swirls over his, making a full sweep of the membrane inside his mouth, passionate but still not sexual, like a housecat rubbing herself against your trouser leg, vowing to cover you in her scent. Without thinking, 329 takes hold of her waist. It’s as supple as ever, unarmed and unarmored. With one hand, she unfastens her hair. Red hair pours down like a waterfall, blocking out the starry sky above 329. He closes his eyes, letting the red curtain cover his line of sight.

He suddenly feels a deep drowsiness, like blindfolded livestock, descended into self-deception as it prepares for slumber in the dark. He’s too tired. Even as the person atop him grips his neck, even as the tightness at his throat makes breathing difficult, he doesn’t struggle, doesn’t even open his eyes.

 _Crack_.

The sound of something snapping breaks the silence. For a moment, 329 thinks it’s his spine that’s been snapped. But the pressure has disappeared from his neck. He can breathe again. There’s something…329’s eyes fly open, and see the broken band of metal in Yasha’s hands.

The Exile collar that had bound 329 for nearly two years, and should have bound him for another thirty, is gone just like that. It should have been indestructible. It should have ended his life the moment it was damaged. But nothing happened. Yasha’s wearing her military gauntlets. Her slender fingers tighten, and the metal band is crumpled into scrap, sparks crackling from its electronics. She tosses it aside like a ball of wastepaper.

329 pants for breath. His neck hasn’t been exposed to air in ages; it feels cold, then hot—Yasha’s mouth closes around his Adam’s apple, leaving him unable to move, like a cat held by the scruff of its neck. His head is a mess. So many questions are fighting their way out of his mouth that for a while none of them make it out; it’s Yasha who keeps talking. Between kisses, she whispers _it’s fine, it’s over, shh_. She says, “The year after the next, I’ll become Consul.” 

“You killed your brother,” says 329. It’s not a question.

“Yes, I killed him.” Yasha stops, then says, “He died slowly and painfully.”

It’s the same tone of voice she used when she announced she’d modded her motorcycle herself.

329 feels cold. He’s fully awake. What kind of person would speak of kinslaying like she’s showing off? Are the elites accustomed to family turning against family, or is it just Yasha? He knows he should keep his mouth shut, but his mouth has other ideas.

He says, “Are you going to kill your father next year?”

“No, he was going to die soon anyway.” Yasha explains. “My eldest sister is a beta. My eldest brother was two years younger, and presented as an alpha two years after my sister was named heir. A few years ago, my sister took drastic measures. Unfortunately, my brother had the same idea, and chose the same time…in the end, one of them died, and the other will be imprisoned for life. Since both of them poisoned my father, even the best medical care can only extend his life by a few years.”

Looks like it’s elite custom.

“It’ll all get better,” Yasha says in a comforting tone. Her eyes shine with excitement, as if sharing good news with 329. “In two years, I’ll be Consul. Give me another year to take care of everything else, and then we can marry. In twenty years, we can have children—looking at current technology, they’ll be able to create a biological child for us in ten years, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to have an heir too close to me in age. We can discuss this later on. We have plenty of time. Our child will have your eyes. I like your eyes.”

She speaks so confidently, as if the future is already determined. It sounds insane, but even more insane is that 329 half believes she can do it. He shakes his head, not knowing if it’s to refute her or to persuade himself. 329 says, “You’re only fifteen!”

“I’ll be sixteen in a month,” Yasha pouts.

“You’re only fifteen,” 329 says, as if in a dream.

“So what?” Yasha’s gaze is hot. “I’m fifteen. I killed my brother, ‘persuaded’ my father, dealt with the rebellious factions. In two years, I’ll be the youngest Consul ever. I was seven when I saw you the first time. I’ve loved you for more than half my life.”

“You have many more fifteen years ahead,” 329 says despairingly.

This can’t be real. Young Eden had wanted to be a merchant, a teacher, a scientist. In the end, he’d joined the rebel army and spent half his life soaring high into the heavens before falling to earth, leaving only a broken body and tattered memories. Young Yasha, scholar of love and intrigue, is already extraordinary after fifteen years. In the long remainder of her life, will she really be satisfied with what she has?

It’s not going to happen. Everyone changes.

“You don’t believe me.” Yasha sighs, her eyes growing distant, as if recollecting something. “Adults are all like that. They don’t think a child can mean what they say.”

Only a child would say that, 329 thinks.

“When I was thirteen, I said that I’d kill anyone who touched you,” Yasha says, enunciating every word. “My brother didn’t believe me.”

In fact, Yasha’s brother didn’t remember what she said at all.

No one remembered what she said. No one took it seriously. Only the girl herself would never forget. She remembers the screams on the other side of the door, the shrieks on this side of the door—her shrieks. She shrieked, begged, bawled hysterically until she choked and couldn’t breathe. It was the first time Yasha had cried since she was old enough to understand things. Before, she’d never spilled a tear. If you could always have everything you wanted presented to you with a bow, you could naturally always remain sweet and ladylike.

She never thought she could cry like that. Her eyeballs were practically melted into her tears. Her throat was raw. Her cheeks and head were boiling hot, the rage of betrayal scorching like steam, almost bursting from her eyes and throat. “You said! You promised me!” she shouted. “He’s mine! Papa! I love him! Give him back to me!”

The little princess was so well-raised that she couldn’t even come up with profanities. All she could do was howl the same few words, over and over. A padded chair held her in place, so that she could neither rush through the door nor hurt herself by accident. She was giving the Consul a headache with her sobs and screams. Unable to take it anymore, he slammed the table, startling his youngest daughter, who’d never received such treatment, into silence.

“Enough!” he demanded. He summoned enough patience to scrape up a few words of comfort. “There’s no shortage of this breed of omega. You can’t have this one. Tomorrow I’ll give you ten just like him. You can pick as you please!”

Her mother wrinkled her brow at _this breed of omega_ , but she only gave a small, respectable sigh, not at all planning to speak up. Yasha looked at her disbelievingly. Her mother quietly rebuked her, “You’re making a scene, crying and shouting like that.”

“He promised me!” Yasha sobbed. “He lied…Mama! Make them stop! They’re…”

“Don’t talk to your father in that tone of voice,” her mother said with a frown, lightly smacking the back of her hand. “This is serious business. Leave it to your brother.”

No one sided with her.

Outside the door were Yasha’s parents; she was their most cherished child. Inside the door was Yasha’s sole surviving brother, a brother who cherished her. Everyone cherished her, Yasha had never doubted, until now. Everything was wrong. Her most trusted loved ones had taken the star she’d pursued for many years, dashed it to the ground, and stomped it to pieces without blinking.

In this moment, Yasha realized.

She wasn’t betrayed. This was what it meant to be cherished. Papa cherished his advisors, Mama cherished her dancers, Eldest Sister cherished her actors, Eldest Brother cherished his purebred dogs, Second Brother cherished his lovers…they cherished her. Playthings and tools relied on their looks and wits to gain favor, while she relied on the bloodline she was born with. She got to enjoy all the gifts that rained upon her from the heavens, but had forgotten that all of it was nothing more than bones thrown to her by an owner.

To be cherished was so easy and uncomplicated, but alas, you could only wait for others’ handouts. You could only have what they chose to give you.

The little princess Yasha couldn’t have her Eden, because the one who is cherished has nothing.


	17. "I'm not him."

At last, the door opened.

Only then did the chair holding Yasha in place loosen its bonds, allowing her to run toward the door. The Consul’s heir walked out; he staggered as his little sister ran straight into him, but only shook his head tolerantly at her, continuing to wipe the blood from his hands with a silk handkerchief. The smell of blood seeped out of the room, mingling with other unclean odors, before the purifying system quickly whisked it away without a trace.

But the smell couldn’t be so easily dispersed inside the room; after all, they hadn’t taken care of its source. A chaos of pheromones assaulted Yasha’s senses. She froze at the doorway, her eyes wide, while her brother’s report went on the background like a blurry cassette. “He won’t be any threat after this…gone so insane he couldn’t take care of himself, needed further treatment before he can be used as bait…”

Yasha had arrived too late; the adults had done everything before she even knew. Torture wasn’t the only thing that had occured. All the prisoners had been drugged and locked into one room; unspeakable drugs had incited a fine show of gang-rape-the-Commander. Top-notch cameras had filmed it all; traitors circulated rumors and the recordings through the entire Protected Area. Secret agents had pushed the remaining rebel leaders toward the dirty tactic of denying that the captured man was the Commander, and insisting that the Eagle was someone else—the omega who’d appeared so many times previously, the current “star of the show”, was only a figurehead taking others’ credit for the purposes of propaganda.

These people shattered the legend themselves, driving a rift between the believers and unbelievers, infighting between the contemptuous and the agonized. The rebel army fragmented, and was gnawed away bit by bit. They filmed the rebel army’s claims of a figurehead, and the rebels’ progressive defeats and retreats, and played it all to the Commander. They executed every prisoner who supported Eden in front of him, at the hands of those who’d surrendered.

—Her father thought that the recently perfected brain procedures were more than enough to eliminate anyone, even the former commander of the rebels. Her brother, on the other hand, believed that the traditional methods were better at setting a public example, and would be more entertaining. If anyone dared to stand up against authority, he deserved that treatment. Not to mention he was an omega. “A pretty, combative omega,” laughed her brother. “Those swine will love it. They’ll broadcast the recordings themselves and jack off to their hero.”

Yasha wanted to vomit.

The instruments of torture had been put away, the corpses dragged off. Only the medical staff remained in the room, and the half-dead man on the bed. He was naked, wearing only his blood, scars and new wounds running into each other. His hair was matted together with filth. The gold from the propaganda videos had grown lightless, mixed with silver-grey. His body lay splayed on the surgical table, connected to a maze of wires and tubes, like a dead butterfly caught in a spiderweb. But he was still awake. Trembling, Yasha walked closer, and saw a pair of eyes despairing to the point of surrender.

“Yasha.” Her brother’s voice came from a long distance away. “Still want him?”

Yasha clapped a hand over her mouth, her head filled with static, a thundering in her ears. She heard her mother reprimanding her brother ( _you’ve made your sister ill.)_ She heard her brother apologizing to her ( _I’ll bring you a clean one tomorrow_.) She heard her own blood boiling.

No, it wasn’t nausea that roiled her organs. It was rage.

“I’m going to kill you,” she said.

The sound caught in her throat, too weak, like the whine of a defeated dog. So Yasha whirled around, raised her voice, and said it again.

I’m. Going. To. Kill. You. She said, staring at her brother. She did not turn back to look at Eden. Now was not the time. All her pain and regret, all her rage and determination, went into this vow. This was her start and end. This was her response: I still want him. I will have him. I will become the lover and not the beloved.

Everyone who heard it laughed.

Her brother laughed, her parents too, everyone, like hearing something funny said by a child. Yes. Naturally. Yasha was the sweet little girl her Mama raised, the spoiled-rotten baby sister left out of the game, the little alpha who’s nothing like an alpha. While Eldest Brother and Eldest Sister schemed for supremacy, she was still playing with her dollies. While Second Brother was going around killing bastards, she was still smiling dopily at posters of the rebel omega. They forgot that she, too, was the product of top-tier gene selection. They forgot that she, too, had the best resources and education that money could buy. They forgot how much she’d learned for the sake of her “laughable crush,” forgot that she’d shot down an ace pilot from four thousand meters away.

They forgot that she, too, was a challenger.

The young alpha had no shortage of time.

“I’m sorry I didn’t come for you the year before,” says Yasha. “You were under heavy surveillance the entire time, as bait for the remaining rebel army. Last year, both my father and brother were personally keeping watch over you. I didn’t have the power to stop them yet. If I can’t have you forever, what’s the point of possessing you only temporarily? I endured it all, using the time to take care of business, so that this moment could arrive sooner. This year, their surveillance finally loosened. I couldn’t resist going to see you.”

“I’m sorry I let that madman attack you,” says Yasha. “The last few months, just as I was close to success, I’ve been transferring the surveillance system over to my control, bit by bit. I never imagined the blind spot caused by my hacks could give that trash an opportunity. It was awful. I was so scared my heart nearly stopped. I immediately moved you here…It was all done in such a rush, it must have been hard on you.”

She murmurs her apologies, explaining the reasons behind her absences. Today, Yasha can finally tell him, “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you.” This sentence has more significance than what she voices.

Eden wouldn’t understand. He doesn’t remember the events that had driven him insane. The surgery cleared away those cruel months alongside over a decade of glorious memories. They needed him to be an unwitting piece of bait, not a broken wreck. So Yasha won’t tell him. Those memories have been deleted. The perpetrators are all dead (Yasha has made sure of this.) The injuries have been repaired by the finest medical technology. It’s as if those months have never happened.

Eden doesn’t need to remember. No one can remember besides Yasha. She’s carved this lesson into her heart, to warn herself of the cost of naivety.

She starts to kiss him again, her lips grazing over scars, her tongue probing between his lips, kissing like she’s licking a candy. Before, her kisses were stolen; only now can she enjoy him to her heart’s content. She can spend hours, an entire night, an entire day doing this. Eden belongs to Yasha. No one can take him away.

“...”

It’s Eden himself who pushes her away. 

His hand is on Yasha’s shoulder. He doesn’t apply enough force to push her away, but enough to be taken as more than playfulness. Confused, Yasha looks up. Her omega looks down, the sadness in his expression unfaded.

“I’m no longer him,” says Eden.

“You are!” Yasha answers. “You’ve just have some memories deleted. You’re still you.”

“Deleted…” He smiles painedly and shakes his head. “It’s not a matter of ‘just.’ Commander Eden was obliterated. I’m just Exile No. 329.”

It’s not something she’ll want to hear.

But he has to say it anyway. If a broken bone heals in the wrong position, it’s naturally better to re-break and re-heal it as soon as possible. There’s no other way, 329 thinks. He can’t spend his entire life playing the role of his own replacement goldfish. He can’t, and he doesn’t want to. He gazes at those hope-filled green eyes, waiting for them to show anger or grief, but Yasha only laughs lightly, perched on his chest, propping up her chin to look at him.

“Do you want to be called 329? It doesn’t sound very respectful, but if you prefer it, I’ll have everyone call you that,” she says. “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

“You don’t understand.” 329 shuts his eyes. “Everything he experienced, all the memories that made him who he was, are gone. The one you love doesn’t exist. I’m not him.”

“If ice melts to water, is it not still the same substance?”

“If you love the coldness and hardness of ice, then what’s the point of water?”

“How do you know what I love?”

329 has no response to that.

“You don’t know,” says Yasha. Suddenly she laughs. “I don’t know either.”

She finds a more comfortable position, resting atop 329, hair brushing his chin. Her voice is as soft as someone talking in her sleep, but her air is perfectly awake.

“But I know whether I’m in love. When I saw the posters, I knew I loved your golden hair. When I saw you, I realized that silver hairs are just as mesmerizing. I loved your handsome, youthful face in the propaganda vids. But only when we met for the first time in person could I see your body. Only then could I discover how soft your lips are, how lovable your scars are—I love every inch of you. You say that the one I love is ‘Commander Eden’, but you already know that we never met. The one I see, talk to, touch, is none other than you. You insist on separating yourself from the ‘Commander’, but you don’t have memories of being the Commander, while I remember him. Don’t you think that it should be up to me to decide whether you’re similar, whether I’m in love?

329 says nothing. Yasha continues.

“I love your righteous expression on the recruitment posters, and I love the way you look as you try to hide the tears in your eyes. I love the bravery with which you rose up, and I love the compromise that bows your head. I love your kindness and weariness, I love your apathy and your passion…You’re right, unlike those who once followed you, I don’t know the ‘Commander.’ I only know you.”

She loves this living corpse, perhaps even more than before.

There are some things that Yasha won’t say. For example, even as her heart aches for what the one she loves has been through, she’s never regretted bringing him down. She loves to see the eagle soar through the heavens; she loves more to nurture the broken-winged raptor inside her cage. She loves a shining hero adored by thousands; she loves more to see him fallen to earth, scorned and spat upon, with only her arms for refuge. He has nothing, nowhere to go, tragic and alone—and thus she has him, he can only love her.

They wail for the fallen star, but she alone possesses the meteorite. From now on the sky is lightless, the night endless, and the shattered guiding star illuminates her dreamscape alone. Dawn will never arrive. The dream will never end.

Those golden memories, this agonized, mesmerizing soul, is all hers.

“That man wanted to kill you, simply because you were different from what he imagined. I’m different from fools like him,” says Yasha. “Those useless hangers-on only love your glory, but I love all of you. Whatever form you take, whatever form my love takes.”

Yasha says, “I love you.”

329 feels terror, because he believes her.


	18. "Why were you disappointed?"

329 feels terror, because he believes her.

Yasha isn’t lying. She has the strength and capacity to express her sincerity. She throws a scorching heart straight at him, scalding this frozen corpse to the point of pain. 329 can’t help but shudder, yet he can’t bear to set down the source of heat. He’d lost the moment Yasha said the words. His inner doubts have found answers and excuses. Every urge coaxes him: _believe her, believe her, don’t mind the details_.

The frightening thing is, he wants to believe her.

329 doesn’t know if it’s love. He has no precedent to refer to, no one to ask. Does she love him? Maybe it’s only a twisted determination and unwillingness to let go, one that changed her life and seared its way into her soul. But if this determination persists, it’s not much different from an eternal vow. Does he love her? Maybe he’s just grasping at straws, taking dependence for love, lost in his own delusion. But the course of his life is already set; Yasha won’t let him go, and he can’t find the wish to leave. In that case, dependence behaves no differently from love.

There’s just one question left, one that’s plagued him the entire time, one that he still can’t answer.

It wanders his throat like a ghost. If he spits it out, it might bring doom; if he swallows it down, it will haunt him for a hundred years. Yasha has never lied to me, 329 says to himself. Another thought bubbles up: she’s only hidden things. She only needs to hide things. 329 sighs deeply, squeezes his eyes shut, and opens his mouth.

He asks, “When you found out I loved you, why were you disappointed?”

Yasha blinks, her lips parting slightly, as if astonished by this question. Unfortunately, 329 knows her too well. He sees the touch of apprehension under the surprise. She’s not astonished by this question; she’s astonished _he still cares about this question_. She prevaricates for a moment, then says awkwardly, “I wasn’t disappointed.”

329 watches her.

“I really wasn’t disappointed!” Yasha insists. “I just didn’t expect it…your first impression of me could hardly be called ideal, and my treatment of you has been lacking in many ways. I genuinely didn’t think you’d fall in love with me.”

It’s the truth. At least, it’s part of the truth. It’s also one of 329’s points of uncertainty. Yasha’s obsession with him has driven her half her life. Why, then, didn’t she set up a better first meeting for them? She could’ve descended from the heavens like a savior and played the amnesiac 329 like a fiddle. “Would you mind engaging in sexual relations with me?” is hardly the ideal meet cute.

“I didn’t plan on meeting you for the first time under those circumstances,” she says, embarrassed, her cheeks growing pink. “But I couldn’t resist. You were so close to me and yet so far. How could I resist? It, it wasn’t a good beginning. I want a new beginning. I want to give you the best beginning possible.”

329 suddenly shivers, a chill crawling up his neck.

Yasha says, “I wanted to give us a new first meeting. To delete both your sufferings as an Exile from before, and my presumptuous intrusion.”

_“If your body doesn’t change, and you don’t remember anything, and you delete the record from the simulation, and no one else knows, is that any different from it never happening at all?”_

329 understands now. 

Yasha’s strange expression in that moment all makes sense now. She was surprised, that he went and fell in love with her on his own initiative. Vexed that this wasn’t going to plan. Debating whether she should still proceed with the plan and delete his memories—she didn’t want to sacrifice this “save file” where he’d already fallen in love with her. What a pity. What a waste. Even if none of it was remotely optimal.

Without thinking, 329 shoves Yasha off him. He scrambles backwards, not stopping even when he hits the headboard, as if there still might be some space behind him where he can hide. His back presses against the wall, his stomach ice-cold. Bottomless terror clamps down on his throat; he wants to scream, but no sound comes out.

He’d thought that he had nothing, that the worst thing that could happen to him was death, but an ignorant commoner couldn’t hope to guess at the games played by the powerful. They erased Eden, but Yasha can also erase 329—she would have done it already, if she hadn’t happened to discover his inconvenient love. In another world, where happenstance didn’t happen, what would it be like now? Would 329 still exist? When Yasha won, when she lovingly erased the suffering of these years, 329 would no longer exist, while Eden remained beyond recovery…

What would be left inside this broken body?

Who would he be?

No no no no no, don’t, don’t do it, he says, shaking his head madly. Don’t do this to me, you can kill me, you can leave me, but don’t touch my brain again, he thinks—and then he realizes, even if Yasha touches his brain, he’ll never know. When Yasha tries to reach for him, he slaps away her hand, screaming hysterically.

The queen-to-be’s eyes widen, her green gaze full of surprise and hurt, as if not understanding why her pet is suddenly throwing a tantrum. She spreads her hands coaxingly, kneeling on the bed, offering explanations and comfort.

She says, “I won’t hurt you! It won’t hurt at all, it’s just the awful memories from these two years…”

She says, “I won’t delete anything important, just the things that hurt you…”

She says, “I’m not going to do it, that was just the original plan, it’s already been scrapped, if you don’t want it I won’t do it…”

She understands nothing.

“What happens the next time you want to do this?” 329 asks. Yasha opens her mouth to speak, but 329 already anticipated her meaningless promises. He doesn’t want to hear them.

“What happens the next time you decide your performance falls short of perfection? The next time you think I’m unsatisfied and want to do better?” he says harshly. “Are you going to reload and try again?”

In the midst of fear blazes rage. Blue eyes meet green eyes, no longer shrinking back, forceful and intimidating. 329 demands, Eden demands, “What am I to you in the end? A game? How am I different from your simulations? Are you going to save data for each dialogue option you choose? Once you’re done saving, will you have any reason to keep me around?”

“It’s not like that!” Yasha says, stunned. “You’re irreplaceable…”

“I’m irreplaceable.” He laughs. “Do you see me as a human being? Or, is it that human beings in your eyes can be rewritten according to your whims? You’re no different from your father.”

Something surges in his heart, like burnt ash and kindling relighting, like the last flash of a dying firefly. Anger can make his blood roar, can make the dead return to life. He’ll shrink back, he’ll compromise, but when he has nowhere left to retreat, he’ll stand and face death head-on. Yasha is struck dumb by his interrogation. Eden feels a scorching, painful sense of release, like a moth smothering a candle flame with its own body.

“It’s not like that…” Yasha insists weakly.

“It is,” Eden says coldly. “You hate him for touching your property, but you never truly opposed him. Your greatest pain was only wanting what you couldn’t have. You don’t know…you don’t know how much mere mortals like us fear being helpless.”

Yasha sees Eden’s tears.

She sees hot tears and courage, she sees coldness and rage, she sees how terror and despair erupt as hot lava. Suddenly, Yasha realizes that the Commander’s call to arms wasn’t born of some romantic heroic idealism, and that those who responded weren’t buoyed by some false sense of their capabilities. They were courageous because they were afraid. They were simply people who’d found themselves with their backs to a wall and refused to die in silence.

“No, I know!” Yasha insists. “I know! I just, I just…”

She knows what it feels like to be helpless. She knows how terrifying it is to be cherished. It was those realizations that woke her from her sweet dreams, and for them, she climbed to the highest peak, believing that as long as she was at the helm, she wouldn’t need to fear being betrayed or wronged. But she’d never wondered how dear, cherished Eden, Eden who was fully aware of what it meant to be cherished, was supposed to not be afraid.

She looks like she’s been slapped, wide-eyed and tongue-tied, her eyes filled with tears too. Eden doesn’t know if the tears are from urgency or regretful realization—can he hope for the latter? Faced with those eyes, the anger can’t endure, leaving only a thick fog of exhaustion and helplessness. Just as he thought the first time they’d met, the young alpha holds no ill-will. She strides forth with head high, racing toward the flower on the mountain’s peak, unable to comprehend the anguish of the grass trampled underneath her feet.

How do you make a god understand the suffering of ordinary mortals.

“Will I still remember, tomorrow?” Eden says wearily. “Will I remember what I asked you?”

“Yes!” Yasha says urgently. “I won’t touch your memories, I swear…”

Eden says, “I don’t believe you.”


	19. For the first time, Eden feels hope.

Eden keeps a diary.

The digital diary in his wristcom can be read with a keypress and deleted with a keypress, convenient and unsettling. Black words on white paper are a lot more reassuring to his eyes. Every day, he writes without pause, setting down everything he remembers, converting the ink in his pen cartridges into dense text in his notebooks.

This too is meaningless, to be honest. It’s easy to delete a digital record, but it’s not hard to throw a match onto a page either. Eden uses the pen and paper that Yasha provides, lives inside Yasha’s house. There’s nowhere he can hide the diary. The virtual butler oversees every corner in this house, even if it no longer shows itself out of consideration for him. Sometimes, Eden is overcome with a sudden rage, ripping up the pages, snapping the pens, slamming the door, collapsing into his bed. When he gets back up, the pen and paper will be once again returned to the table, all good as new.

Eden thinks about carving something into his body, but if Yasha has the will, there’s no place on his body secret enough, and no scar that can’t be repaired. He lies in bed, thinking the same thoughts forcefully again and again, as if by repeating something enough times in his brain, he can get it to stay.

He thinks, _Eden. 329. Yasha._

He thinks, _I love her. I’m afraid of her. Even now, I don’t hate her._

Yes, for now, even now, he can’t make himself hate Yasha. The past Eden who’d joined the Revolutionary Army must have considered the risks of rebellion and the price of failure when he made the choice. The commander of the Revolutionary Army and the daughter of the Consul were by nature diametrically opposed; the victory of one meant the doom of the other. It would have been this way regardless of whether a romance out of a classical tragedy was involved. Now that he knows the full story, Eden can’t blame Yasha. And if he’d once hated the daughter of the Consul, he doesn’t remember.

At this point in his thoughts, Eden can only laugh ruefully. Memory deletion is too handy. Even if he hated Yasha to his bones right now, all she needs is a single high-tech surgery, and he won’t ever hate again. The effect is so dramatic, the procedure so convenient. What’s there to prevent the powerful from using it?

His days thus pass in a muddle.

After their conversation, Yasha left in a panic, and she’s yet to return. The virtual butler provides for all his day-to-day needs; he’s given more room to roam in the house, and more facilities for passing the time, such as a gym and library. The library is at first all novels, but soon a research report begins to appear, placed in the most eye-catching spots. Eden suspects it’s all part of some greater plan, but it’s not like he still has anything left worth scheming for. The day he discovers the first research report, he goes ahead and reads it.

At first, Eden doesn’t understand anything. He recognizes every word on the report individually, but put together, it’s like reading a different language. There’s no mandatory education in the Protected Area. being literate is already an achievement; understanding the contents of the report is asking too much of him. He tries to question the butler, who answers everything he asks, and brings him related books, whether his questions and books have anything to do with the research report.

A word points him to a book; a sentence directs him into an entire field of study. Understanding the report is a massive undertaking, like asking a middle school dropout to teach himself a grad school course. Fortunately, Yasha isn’t short on or stingy with supplementary materials, and Eden has no shortage of time.

He takes several months to understand the report, which turns out to be a summary of research into how to protect an important figure from assassination. Eden’s brief fill-in-the-blank style self-study lets him just barely get the gist of the report, but no more. He reads the last line, turns off the screen, and pinches the bridge of his nose, wondering if he’s misread Yasha’s intentions—he really can’t figure out what a research report on how to prevent assassination has to do with him.

The next day, Yasha visits.

She smiles at Eden, looking weary but also intensely energetic, like someone who’s drunk too much coffee after pulling an all-nighter. Eden regards her wordlessly. Yasha speaks first. “Come with me. Let me show you some things.”

After half a year, Eden leaves this house for the first time.

They go through one teleporter after another, through rooms forming a disjointed labyrinth. He doesn’t see anyone the entire way, but the marks of technology grow denser and bolder, as if in a few steps they’ve passed through centuries. Eden doesn’t know how far he’s walked when he finds himself shivering inside a white room, his eyes dazzled by the cold light reflected off the machinery inside. As his steps slow, Yasha stops, giving him a comforting expression.

“I won’t do anything to harm you,” she says. “To be honest, we can teleport there directly, but I feel like you wouldn’t want me to take you directly? Last time…”

“Where are we going?” Eden interrupts her.

“The Protected Area command center. The Environmental Regulation room,” Yasha replies without hesitation, reaching a hand toward Eden. “Want me to hold your hand?”

Eden nods. Then he shakes his head. He continues onward.

They do end up in the Protected Area command center.

A few months ago, Eden wouldn’t even have known what he was looking at.

Blobs of light hover in a void, a dense starscape where every nebula hosts an interchange of countless messages. The light-mind turns and calculates at a speed impossible for organic minds. Optical fibers invisible to the naked eye meet here, data from across the entire Protected Area flowing through those arteries to this heart chamber. Components he doesn’t know the name of emit faint hums; the heat produced by light signals fade in an eyeblink, leaving only strange colors on the retinas of those watching it…it’s hard to imagine that the semblance of natural phenomena blanketing the millions of humanity comes from this hulk, covered in the marks of creation by man.

Eden has learned a lot on these few months. Maybe he still can’t pass the entrance exams of the elites, but he does know what they’re looking at. This isn’t just the command center for the Protected Area. They stand inside the Protected Area Core.

This room is the very machine that shields them from outside radiation, that’s created the habitable environment of the Protected Area.

“You’ve already seen the report,” says Yasha. “You should already know what the “Protected Area Core, the ‘Zero Capsule’, and the ‘lie detector’ are, right?”

“In theory,” Eden answers.

 _You were the one who gave me all those resources. If there’s any problems with them, I wouldn’t be able to tell,_ he thinks.

“All the research I gave you was genuine. I didn’t tamper with any of it. Even if you don’t believe me, you can see that their contents weren’t invented from thin air,” says Yasha. “My wristcom has a lie detector equipped. The red light shines when it detects a lie. For example, ‘I’m an alpha,’ ‘you’re an alpha,’ ‘I know how to fly a plane,’ ‘I don’t know how to fly a plane,’ see… I expect you’re thinking, I can fake the lie detector too—after all, you don’t know much about the subject. I can’t deny that, but this is all the evidence in my power to provide. I swear on everything I possess and everything I will possess, the lie detector is real. If you want, I’ll wear it whenever I’m around you. I won’t lie to you.”

Her tone is deeply sincere, almost beseeching. Eden doesn’t think he can fully believe it, but he’s not unmoved either. He tightens his lips, silent. Yasha gives a small smile and continues.

“Being the Consul is a high-risk job. Before I was born, my father was already investigating a one-and-done method of preventing assassination. You can’t stop others from coveting what you have; you can only stop their hand by making the price of killing the Consul too high to bear. So my father thought, he should link his life with the safety of the entire Protected Area. If he was murdered, anyone who’d benefit from his death wouldn’t survive either.”

It seemed that the Consul thought the ship should go down with the captain.

“Initially, research went well, and we obtained a ‘Zero Capsule.’ The capsule would be installed inside the Consul’s brain. Once activated, it can’t be removed, can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed. The plan was, once the Consul died by assassination, the capsule would send out a signal for the destruction of the Protected Area Core, exposing everyone inside the Protected Area to the extreme temperatures and radiation outside. But the researchers stumbled over the next question: how do you tell the difference between the Consul dying of natural causes and dying of assassination? The experiments went on for years, but right up to my father’s poisoning, they still hadn’t made any inroads. The capsule can only be triggered by a single condition, but there’s a thousand ways to assassinate somebody.”

The report had explained this in detail. The trauma of a scalpel incision is similar to that of a stabbing. The mental shock of a nightmare is similar to that of an assault. Even advanced technology was helpless against the challenge. _Linking the safety of the Consul with the Protected Area Core_ proved impossible to reconcile with _avoiding unintended catastrophe at the slightest error_. In the end, the project had been shelved.

Yasha touches her wristcom; it scans a line of light over her head, projecting a cross-section as a hologram. Eden stares at the hologram for a few seconds before his eyes abruptly widen.

The Zero Capsule is installed in Yasha’s head, identical to the diagrams in the research. 

“Father’s research never succeeded. The capsule can still only be triggered by a single condition,” Yasha said unhurriedly, as if she didn’t have a button that could destroy the world in her head. “I set the only condition as ‘trigger when the paired device is triggered.’ And the paired device…”

She stretches out her hand again. A device the size of a pill lies on her palm.

“The paired device can only be triggered by the surgery used on Exiles,” says Yasha.

For a moment, Eden’s expression is blank. Then realization shoots up his spine like lightning and explodes in his brain with a deafening sound. He takes rapid breaths, even takes a step back. _Could it, no, it can’t be, she can’t be saying…_

“No surgery is required. You just have to swallow it,” says Yasha. “The nanobots enter the ingester’s body and install the device in the brain. It activates one hour later. Like the Zero Capsule, it can’t be removed, can’t be stopped, can’t be reversed. If you choose to take it, no one will be able to touch your memories. Any level of brainwashing will activate the Zero Capsule. I’ll die, and simultaneously the Protected Area Core will self-destruct. Humanity will face true extinction on Earth. No one will survive.

She says that.

The lie detector does not light up.

Every hair on him stands on end. Eden trembles, and doesn’t know what emotion is causing it. It could be a lie. It could be a trap. But the voice of doubt is growing fainter and fainter. Every ounce of instinct tells him to believe. The red-haired, green-eyed Consul-to-be stands before him, holding the switch capable of destroying herself and the world, palm up, fingers extended. Her eyes shine. What’s in there…anticipation, the gamble to end all gambles, ecstacy, ecstacy, ecstacy—she’d become aware of that trust between them, that trust against all reason, before Eden did. She’s willing to light the world on fire for it.

“You’re crazy,” Eden says, his voice shaking, already in retreat. “What if there’s someone who wants to destroy the world? What if someone kidnaps me and forcibly…”

“No one will touch you as long as I live!” Yasha cries. Her eyes blaze, perfectly rational and perfectly mad. “If I can’t do it, if I fail to protect you—again—then let it all happen!”

Then let it all happen, if Yasha loses her star once more. If even climbing to the greatest heights isn’t enough to guard her treasure, then let her pay with her life, then let the city become dust and ash, let the survivors wail, let the sun fall. If she must lose again, then there will be no winner left on Earth.

“Believe me,” says Yasha. She doesn’t come closer, only holds her hand out. “I won’t let go of you, but I won’t revise your choice for you. It doesn’t matter to me who you want to become. I’ll still be a dictator, but I won’t be my father. Things will improve. The sky will be reopened. We’ll be okay. We have many, many years to figure out what to do. Take it. Would you like to take it?”

This is madness, Eden thinks. This is inhuman, overweening pride, the deed of a tyrant, utterly wrong…His heart thunders. His fingers tremble. His vision is blurred with tears and he doesn’t know why he’s crying. He thinks, this isn’t love, at the minimum it isn’t normal, it’s completely unhealthy. But what does he know about love? The Eden from before might have been able to teach Yasha how to love, but the current Eden can’t, he himself doesn’t even know how. They’re both monstrosities, like the products of two malformed machines, warped and twisted in different ways but similarly awful. He stares at the pill, thinks about “falling”, “becoming the monster”, “madness.” He thinks of Zero Capsule, the paired device, the doomsday in his imaginings. He…

He feels at peace.

Eden takes the pill and swallows it.

He betrays his former sacrifice, to join a tyrant in her depravity, to aid and abet a madness and obsession that may destroy the world, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t care one fucking bit. His alpha lets out a joyous shriek. His tyrant launches herself at him, wraps him in her arms, kisses him, congratulates him on his fall. His Yasha laughs aloud, cups his face, babbles how worried she was, how happy she is. The future Consul rests in Eden’s arms, her eyes reflecting a man-made sky.

She says, “We’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”

For the first time, Eden feels hope.


End file.
